


Kicks Like a Sleep Twitch

by cherie_morte



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon Blood Addict Sam Winchester, Dreamwalking, M/M, Post-Season 3 AU, Sam Saves Dean, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:58:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10766613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherie_morte/pseuds/cherie_morte
Summary: Post-Season 3 AU:Sam continues to use the dream root after they finish the dreamwalking hunt in order to make his ability to control dreams stronger. He tells himself it's just to hone a skill he can use while hunting. As Dean's deal gets closer to coming due and Sam's nightmares become more and more vivid, however, it becomes an escape—until Sam walks into Dean's dream and everything changes. What started as a way to avoid bad dreams becomes a new connection between Sam and Dean, one so strong that even the distance between Earth and Hell can't keep them apart.





	Kicks Like a Sleep Twitch

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of my 2012 [samdean_OTP](http://samdean-otp.livejournal.com/) minibang, originally posted [here](http://infatuated-ink.livejournal.com/77564.html). With beautiful art by [mashimero](http://mashimero.livejournal.com/) [here](http://mashimero.livejournal.com/190726.html). You can also listen to this as [a podfic](http://amplificathon.livejournal.com/1797235.html) recorded by the wonderful [mustnttelllies](http://mustnttelllies.livejournal.com/).

It's a slippery slope.

It wouldn't be true if Sam denied that he's curious. If he said he hadn't liked it by the end of the hunt or if he pretended he hadn't realized he was getting good at it awfully fast. The power it gave that creep Jeremy—the strength that had the guy so convinced he was a God—it was there for Sam, too. It was seductive. He would be lying if he acted like he didn't want to taste it again.

He's lying right now. He's looking his brother in the eye and saying he doesn't want to do this, because it's not right. That's not the lie, it really isn't. He wants to, though. So bad his palms are itching. Sam's curious. He's always been curious. Always wanted to learn and understand things he has no business sticking his nose into. It's the demon in him, maybe.

"We can talk to another witness," Sam says. "Figure it out on our own, the old fashioned way. We don't need this."

Sam sets the jar with what's left of the dream root down on the coffee table, away from them both.

"Need? Maybe not," says Dean with a shrug. "But it's there and it'll get us the info we do need. I don't see why we shouldn't just use it."

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "Because we can't just go poking around in someone's brain for information."

"This guy is a murderer, Sam. He doesn't have rights." Dean huffs. "Look, I get it, I do. But it's one time, and if we don't find out where the altar is and smash it by tomorrow morning, this guy is going to kill another kid. A freaking kid!"

Sam shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "There's got to be another way."

"There's almost definitely another way," Dean replies. "But not one we're going to find in the next three hours."

Sam shakes his head. "You do it, then. I'm not touching this."

"I'm not as good at it as you are. You can find out quicker. Sam, be reasonable. We don't have time for this."

There's the magic phrase. They don't have the time. 'And whose fault is that?' Sam wants to ask. They don't have time, Dean's right—not to dawdle on this hunt or to be on this hunt at all. They don't have time, not for anything. Sam could drive himself crazy listing all the things _they don't have time_ for.

Dean's deal is going to come due in a few months. Just a few months, and he's insisting on these bullshit jobs when they should be finding a way to save him. The sooner they finish this one, that's a few extra hours for Sam to keep looking before Dean finds the next distraction and forces him to put his research aside.

"Just this once," Dean assures him, reaching for the dream root and placing it in Sam's palm.

Sam thinks of how precious those hours can be and his fingers close around the jar. Whatever trouble comes from it, Sam wants it on the record that it's Dean's idea. Dean's fault. He insisted, and Sam doesn't have the time to argue.

Sam finds the information they need in what feels like five minutes but ends up closer to 45. It doesn't matter, though, they're still in time. Thanks to the dream root, Sam is finally able to decode all the information they’ve gotten and locate the sacrificial altar before the hour arrives for it to claim its next victim. Dean finds the man who set it up before he wakes and spares Sam the details. Sometimes killing monsters means killing people; Sam has mostly accepted that, but it doesn't mean he has to like it.

As usual, Dean claims the rest of the day as a victory party and starts drinking somewhere around noon. Sam spends as long as he can doing research before Dean finally gets to the point where he needs to be babysat, when he's dangling off Sam's arm whining that he's bored and there's nothing on TV and why is Sam reading when they should be eating or watching porn or both. Sam sighs and gives in faster than usual today, because his research is leading nowhere, and Dean looks so lonely drinking on the bed across the room all on his own.

"It's an art form," Dean mutters, dangling a string of noodles over his face. "Sammy, I'm telling you. Noodles this perfect don't happen every day."

"You're so drunk you probably can't even taste anymore," Sam replies, watching as his brother slurps so many cheap takeout noodles down that he's frankly surprised Dean isn't choking.

"Yeah, well," Dean replies, sitting up. His eyes go bright as if he's about to say something really witty. " _Your face_ is drunk."

"You're the cleverest," Sam answers. He tries to pour some sauce on his chicken and accidentally uses too much, but he pretends it was on purpose when he realizes Dean noticed.

"Because you're totally sober."

When Sam looks up, Dean is watching him with warm eyes and a knowing smile. Sam wants to punch him in the mouth a little. He's pretty sure if he actually tried he'd end up halfway across the room, hugging his brother in the most embarrassing way possible, so he's pretty glad the food is enough of an obstruction right now to stop him from moving.

Sam holds his brother's gaze when he catches it, and they sit there for what must be at least a minute, blinking across the room at each other like they're caught in a trap. Finally, Sam sees something flying at his face and he's too wasted to duck before it makes impact.

He realizes it's a fortune cookie only because Dean is tearing into his own when he opens his eyes again. "I got a bull's eye," Dean says proudly. "I hit you right in your freakish, giant forehead. I should get a prize."

Sam rolls his eyes and opens his cookie.

"Mine says I have 'an unusual equipment for success.'" Dean's hands drop to his lap with the thin slip of paper and he turns his head. "Hey, Sam, do you think it's talking about my dick?"

"I don't want to think about your dick, man," Sam mutters as he breaks past the shell and pulls his fortune out.

 _The road to hell is paved with good intentions_ , it tells Sam in obnoxious, clichéd little blue letters, and Sam drops it like a hot coal.

"What's it say?" Dean asks, his hand extending across the bed so Sam can give it to him.

Sam crumples it up and throws it in what's left of his dinner. Dean's hand looks blood red in the light pouring out of the TV, and he's not so hungry all of a sudden.

"Nothing." Sam covers the food and pushes it into the garbage bag. "It's a blank."

"That's not cool," Dean replies with indignation. "We should sue. You're a lawyer, right?"

"I'm going to throw the trash out," Sam tells him as he gathers together two large grease-stained brown bags.

Dean grins. "Or a garbage man, apparently."

He yawns and relaxes back into bed. Sam finds a dumpster around the corner from their room and stands out in the crisp air, taking deep breaths and wishing he wasn't so sober all of a sudden. By the time he gets back, Dean is sleeping like a baby. Half a bottle of whiskey is like a Benadryl to him, but Sam sleeps fitfully.

Every time he drifts off his brother ends up stained red, his hand reaching out for Sam and Sam's not there to take it or help him, and it's not a fortune he wants this time. He's begging for help, but Sam's not paying attention.

Sam can only take it for three hours before he just gives up and out comes his laptop for more research.

He keeps using the root after that night.

Sam makes a world of excuses for it at first. It really did help the last case, and who knows when it could come in handy again? Dad always said anything that can get them a leg up in a hunt is worth working on. It could be the difference between life and death. Sam is just honing his skills.

It has nothing to do with the fact that every night he gets stronger his nightmares lessen up. When the hellhounds start barking—Sam can will them away sometimes. Not always. But sometimes. And when he can't…he doesn't have to stay in his own dreams. Normal people don't spend their nights dreaming of hellhounds. Sam can't be one of them, but he can borrow the tranquility for a few hours, at least.

He practices every night, throwing in whatever DNA he finds lying around, completely blind as to whose dream he's about to wander into. It's kind of gross if he thinks about it, which he tries not to do, though it's easier on some days than others. One night he tosses a short white hair in expecting to fall into some old lady's dream and instead he finds himself in the world's largest cat toy store and realizes he drank someone's pet. Still, it's a pretty amusing night on the whole.

Sam's not actually planning to use the dreamwalking thing in any more hunts. Not unless it's absolutely necessary, and it's not like he's hurting anyone, anyway. He leaves the dream if it seems like something private, something a stranger shouldn't intrude on. He doesn't look for information or explanations or start psychoanalyzing. Most dreams are so meaningless, anyway, so random and so soon forgotten. What does it matter if one more person is there to be erased the next morning? Who would begrudge Sam the little peace he can find in someone else's sleep?

It's a confusing way to spend nights, flitting from one stranger's nonsensical dream to the next. Sam could impose order—he's already strong enough to conjure up new people and places when he starts. After a couple of weeks, he can change entire dreamscapes when he feels like it. But he doesn't. Sam doesn't touch anything major. He doesn't risk that unless he's sure it won’t hurt.

He finds a little girl having a nightmare on his sixth night using it, that's the only time he bends the rules. Not like she wouldn't thank him for turning the things chasing after her into sunshine and rainbows if she knew there was someone to thank. Anyway, Sam can't help that one, that's how he was trained. He's supposed to save innocent people from monsters, and if he's in the dream and capable, why the hell not? It's what Dean would do. Not that Sam is feeling terribly supportive of Dean and his stupid impulse to fix everything whether it wants to be fixed or not.

He doesn't change anything else. And when the root runs out, which it will in a couple of days, Sam's not going to look for another jar of it. He could never explain wanting more to Dean, and he's gotten as good, probably better, at dreamwalking as he'll need to be for any hunt. The root is expensive and rare, and Bela is not exactly on their list of allies right now.

Sam would do just about anything for some of her DNA—a quick, easy map to the Colt. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of thoughts that he's spent enough time stressing about in the waking world, and fixes his attention on the conversation at hand.

"Anyway, the point is," Sam says, taking an extended sip from his coffee, "I see why you're upset, but I don't think feeding your sister to the hydra is a very practical way to deal with the situation."

The girl across the table from him, Kelsey, sighs. "I guess." Her nails drum on the table, a blinding shade of neon purple. She's probably about 14 and has bright orange hair, though Sam knows, in that way you just know things in dreams, that her hair is actually a mousey shade of brown. "But she looks so funny with her feet kicking in the air like that."

Sam gazes across the street to where one of the monster's heads is poking out of the window of a small, pink house with a girl about two years older than Kelsey dangling from its jaw. He covers his smirk by pretending to take another sip from his now empty coffee cup. She really does look kind of hilarious. Dean would love this.

"Really, though," he says once he's sure he can talk without laughing.

"It's not like the thing is really gonna hurt her," Kelsey says, flicking bitterly at her napkin. "She'll still be perfect in every way when I wake up tomorrow morning."

"No, I know. But don't you worry what it says about you that you feel you need a hydra to deal with her? I'm sure Miranda doesn't dream of feeding you to monsters."

"Of course she doesn't," says the girl. "She's so nice all the time."

Sam laughs quietly. It's kind of bizarre, sitting here talking to some teenage girl about her problems, but he likes her. At the very least, he certainly sees where she's coming from. Sometimes having perfect older siblings really is exasperating; Sam could write several books on the subject.

"Don't tell me you've never had a mean dream about Dean after a fight."

Sam flinches. He thinks of the nightmares he's been fleeing ever since the dream root came along and offered a way out. Dean with his throat torn out by strong, canine teeth. Dean burning, burning, burning forever while Sam watches and does nothing. Dean and some black-eyed demon tangled together while Sam lies in bed with his spine on the floor. No, not after fights. Every fucking night for half a year, but not because he's mad at Dean.

The sky starts to darken above him and Kelsey. Sam stands up, forcing the thoughts and the clouds that came with them out of his mind. "Talk to your sister," he urges. "You don't know how lucky you are to have one."

He ditches the dream then and doesn't try sleeping again that night. Dean wakes up looking infuriatingly well-rested, the way he has every night since he made that stupid deal, and smiles at Sam from the bed across the room. "You look like shit, Sammy," he says. "You oughta sleep more."

Sam wonders if Kelsey would let him borrow her hydra.

The root runs out on day ten. That's it, that's supposed to be game over on dreamwalking practice for Sam. But as he's drifting off that night, reaching the in-between place where he's still a little awake, he realizes that there are dreams pushing in on him from every direction. He doesn't know why. Sam does his best to ignore the part of his brain that says it’s probably the demon blood, sensing a psychic power and making it stronger just like Bobby guessed it would. Because even knowing that, he still can't resist using it to his advantage.

He finds the closest dream that isn't Dean's—Sam has sworn to stay out of Dean's dreams, and that's the only rule he made about this dreamwalking mess that he's doing a good job sticking to. Dreams are the only place Dean has to himself. Sam felt flushed and embarrassed enough just from the glimpse of Lisa Braedon he got when he was allowed to be in his brother's brain. He doesn't have the right to know what Dean's dreaming about, and, what's more, he doesn't want to know. All he can think when he looks at his brother asleep is of the picnic Dean will never go on with that woman he's never going to get to know. Because he's going to be dead soon if Sam doesn't fix things, and even if he does, Dean still won't go to her. He'll always be too busy taking care of Sam, and Sam's not good enough to let him off that hook. The least he can do is let Dean have his dreams, his one Sam-free space.

The dream he ends up in is boring. They're staying at a Days Inn, so Sam finds himself with the father of the family sleeping in the room just next to his and Dean's. He's freaking out about something he thinks he left at home, checking his pockets over and over again, tossing things out of what seems like a bottomless suitcase as he tries to find it hidden somewhere in the folds of clothing. The kids are in the corner, crying because of this thing he forgot to pack, saying that he ruined their vacation forever. His wife is laughing at him and flirting with concierge, who is wearing nothing but a Speedo and his concierge hat and looks suspiciously like Brad Pitt.

He sees Sam standing in the corner, but he doesn't act like it's strange. He pauses for a moment, hardly glancing in Sam's direction. "Have you seen my passport?" he asks.

Sam shakes his head, which makes the man turn back to the room and begin pacing nervously, apparently forgetting Sam is even there. Sam takes mercy on the guy, makes the passport materialize on the counter. The man sees it immediately, his face lights up, and he holds it over his head triumphantly before declaring that they can now go to the pool.

It's not the best dream he's crashed, but it beats the hell out of worrying about Dean's deal. Sam doesn't wait around to ask why he needed his passport to go swimming, his brother is shaking him awake.

Dean finds a job in Florida the next day, and Sam doesn't dream again for six months.

No, longer. Six months and a hundred days. He doesn't know if the whole thing was a dream or if the Trickster just didn't want him to dream. Six months, the longest of Sam's life. The most miserable. He didn't dream because he was empty. Because Dean was dead. 101 times over, but it's the last one that sticks.

Sam doesn't remember what it was like to really be dead, but he envies the state at this point. Nothing to worry about. No nightmares. No knowing he's about to wake up to another day his brother will be dying or already lost. Sam is never going to forgive Dean for taking that away from him.

To Dean—to everyone in the world except for Sam—they roll out of town just a few days after they arrive. Mission maybe not accomplished, but crisis averted. The Trickster won't be killing anyone else in Broward, technically that's a job well done. To Sam it's a loss—he wants to kill that Trickster once for every time he made Dean bleed. But Dean is all smiles and laughter and singing Asia badly at the top of his lungs. He tells Sam to rise and shine, like he did for 100 days before he didn't say anything for six months, and Sam lets him, because Dean is grating on his nerves and Sam really kind of missed that.

They stole those six months from Sam, Dean and the Trickster, and neither of them seems particularly sorry about it. Sam makes Dean drive and drive and drive until they're finally out of Florida, that never fucking ending state that chewed Sam's brother up and spit him out so many times Sam lost count. 

"I'm tired, man," Dean says when they stop for gas in Jacksonville. "I've been driving for nine hours straight. You gotta take over, or we're stopping for the night."

He yawns as he finishes that, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He really does look beat. Alive, though.

"You have to drive a bit further," Sam says. "I'll pick up when we get to Kingsland."

"Why?"

Because he'll look dead if he falls asleep in the passenger's seat with his head against the window, and then Sam will be back in Broward and all this driving will have been for nothing.

"Because I asked nicely," Sam replies, getting into the passenger's seat and slamming the door.

He sees Dean rub his eyes and shake his head as he gets in next to Sam. "Careful with my car, jackass," he says, but he indulges Sam and doesn't mention stopping again until they're well into Georgia. They get a room when Dean finally says he's done for the night. Sam agrees easily. They're out of Florida, and Sam's as tired from watching Dean as Dean is from driving.

They both pass out pretty quickly. Sam knows because he waits, lying in bed as close to the edge as he can get without falling, straining to hear his brother in the next bed over. It's psychotic maybe, but Sam's muscles all relax as soon as he hears Dean's breathing even out, slow and steady and constant. That's what Dean sounds like asleep, and that means Sam got him all the way through a day without watching him die.

He closes his eyes and drops off in minutes.

The dreams catch him off guard at first. It's been so long since the last time this happened, since before they got to Broward. But it's only been a few days in reality, and his body is still hardwired. If there were ever a chance of Sam stopping this, it's gone now. Sam's nightmares won't just be about hellhounds any more. Now Sam has to be scared of furniture falling from the sky and old men in cars and fast food and himself. He killed Dean more times than anything in that time loop, and that's not even counting the fact that every death was Sam's fault because he couldn't stop them. Sam's hands are even filthier with his brother's blood than that. He carried the axe on day two, lit the match on day ten, forgot to warn Dean about the pot hole he tripped into on day 25—he doesn’t even remember all the ways he murdered his brother, but he has no doubt that his dreams will remember for him.

Sam can't go back to that. He can't, he won't. He has an alternative; he can walk right out of his own dreams and into someone else's. Why shouldn't Sam get that one little break? All he wants is to feel human again. He seeks out the dreams around him instinctively, and there it is. Of course it's Dean's dream in front of him, shimmering bright and tempting. Dean is closest, like Dean always has been and always is supposed to be.

Sam reaches out, letting three fingers dip into it. He feels the dream pull at him, his brother wrapping around those fingers. Sam wants so badly to let it happen. Fall in and drown, enveloped in nothing but Dean. Sam hasn't spent time with him in so long without having to jump at every sound. But in the dream, Dean will be safe and happy and Sam can just sit and watch him and, God, he's missed that. He's got so little time left to do it.

Sam yanks his hand back as if burned. This deal is really making a needy freak out of him.

He moves on, pushing out further. There are dreams in both of the rooms on either side of his and Dean's, but every time Sam settles on one, he puts his hand out to touch and what he feels is…nothing. A stranger. Not Dean.

Sam can still sense Dean's dream closest to him. He moves on, one room further, then two, then three. All of the dreams he passes hover in his memory, but no matter how many he rejects, they don't drown that first one out. It drowns them instead.

 _Maybe_ , Sam thinks. _Maybe Dean wouldn't mind so much anyway._

Why should he? Sam has dreams he'd rather Dean not see, sure, but not many. Not every night. He wouldn't mind if Dean came to visit. He'd welcome it. If Dean could fix his nightmares, the way Sam can fix anyone's except for his own, he would do it whether Sam wanted him or not. Dean might be having nightmares. He's the one—no, no, no he isn’t. Sam will save him. Dean just thinks he is.

Sam turns back, pulled toward his room, but he swerves before he can trip into his own head and see what horror show is going on inside. There Dean is again. Sam moves forward. He'll leave if Dean is with Lisa. He'll leave if he's not wanted. He just wants to see his brother, make sure he's not scared or lonely or bored.

Sam doesn't give himself the chance to second guess the decision before he steps into Dean's dream.

It's claustrophobic inside his brother's head. Instead of the wide-open spaces Sam is used to in dreamscapes, he finds himself closed up inside of a small brown room. The light is low and hot, flickering in and out, and it smells familiar, like wood and sweat, so pungent it's a little intoxicating.

The light is coming from an oil lamp just next to the bed, and Sam recognizes where he is. A cabin in Washington they stayed in for a week the summer he turned 16. There was no power because the damn storm that stranded them there knocked it out, and Sam and Dean were stuck there alone with no way to call Dad and tell him. It was never this warm, the rain leaked in through the roof, and the firelight was less effective at lighting even the smallest rooms than it seems now. Now it's almost romantic. 

The whole place had given Sam the creeps. His room came furnished with a painting of a laughing clown on the wall nearest the bed. Dean had insisted Sam sleep there, and Sam thought at the time that he was too old to be bothered by it. He knew Dean would give him the other room if he asked, but he'd tease him the whole time they were there about being scared, so Sam had sucked it up. He would have sworn that thing was staring at him every goddamned night, though.

He looks to that wall now and is surprised to see it hanging directly across from him. Which means this is Sam's room, making an already kind of weird setting for Dean's dream even weirder.

He doesn't have to work very hard to find his brother. The bed takes up most of the room. Sam thinks that's different, but that bed is the only thing that seems to matter in the dream anyway. Dean is lying down on it, pinned to the mattress, and at first Sam thinks he's fighting.

There's the sound of skin hitting skin, and someone is hovering over Dean, pushing him roughly. Sam nearly seizes forward to grab the guy, pull him away and strangle him before he gets to make this death number 102 that Sam has to stand by idly and watch. But then Dean sits up a little, his hand caressing the man's cheek under a curtain of hair, and when he smiles, Sam feels a confused pull of anger and jealousy in the pit of his stomach.

They aren't fighting. They're fucking. And—it's not that Sam cares if Dean fucks guys, whether he only does it in dreams or not. Sam's a little hurt that his brother never felt the need to tell him something like that, but it’s the smile that's really getting to him. That's Sam's smile. Dean doesn’t even let the diner waitresses see that one. Sam thought it was his.

He closes his eyes for half a second just to check if it'll still be there when he opens them. He's been here for well over a minute, watching his brother fuck some stranger in a dream, and he feels mortified the moment it sinks in just how long ago he should have fled this or at least looked away. He should not have stood here staring, which is what he's doing, even now that he's thinking of how weird that makes him.

The man dives back down, Dean collapsing with him, and their lips catch in a kiss. Dean's hand moves slowly up the other guy's spine. It's dwarfed by the broad expanse of back. Whoever he is, he's bigger than Dean, probably bigger than Sam even. Sam takes a shaky step backward, trying to convince himself to leave, but he can feel curiosity scratching up inside of him as usual, and he wants to know who this is. Needs to—he'll go crazy.

Sam feels like the kiss goes on forever, but finally Dean breaks it, his head falling back and a moan escaping from his lips.

"Oh, God. Oh, God," he says. "That's good. Just like that."

Sam's face burns up as he listens, because he can't help thinking—that's what Dean used to sound like when he was training him. _Just like that_ , and, man, these are not things he needs to start getting tangled up in his already twisted brain. He should not be here to see or think any of this.

The man takes advantage of the exposed throat, sucking and licking up and down, and when he pulls back, shaking his head so his hair leaves his eyes, Sam recognizes the profile immediately. He knows that pointy nose; Dean's been teasing him about it for years.

Sam tries to leave then, as if retreating fast enough is going to change the suspicion beginning to form, but then Dean opens his mouth and Sam turns, thinking he's busted.

"Sammy," Dean gasps. 

Sam looks at his brother, but Dean hasn't noticed he's there. His eyes are fixed on the Sam writhing above him, both of his hands caught in long brown hair as he drags Sam in for another kiss.

"Dean," the other Sam replies, smiling against Dean's mouth.

"Don't have all year," he finishes. "C'mon, baby."

Sam's smile vanishes as he growls, tackling Dean down, and Dean laughs, fighting back, but not with any real force. Sam can't help thinking that they look pretty good, that Dean smiling like that—like Sam has never seen before—is kind of beautiful.

He feels a wave of disgust wash over him just for thinking that, as if anything he's looking at is okay just because of some smile. It's his brother dreaming about him like that, and Sam should be sick just from knowing. The fact that he isn’t is terrifying. He finally manages to pull himself out of the dream and sits up in bed, wet from sweat and shaking.

A few feet away, Sam's brother turns over, letting out a quiet groan. Sam catches his eyes drifting down, wondering if Dean's dick is as hard as his own, and just what the hell that means for both of them. Dean dreaming that was—weird, okay, given it was really weird. But people have weird dreams. Tomorrow, Dean might be grossed out by it, if he remembers at all. It's not like people always get to choose what they dream about.

That doesn't explain why Sam—who _was_ in control of his senses and _could_ have changed it—stood there and watched, or why he's more turned on than he has been in months, or why, of all the questions cluttering his mind right now, the only one that’s holding his attention is _I wonder if I could really make him smile like that?_

"I'm craving sausage."

Sam jolts awake, pulling back from his brother's touch against his shoulder. "What?"

Dean stops shaking Sam and raises an eyebrow. "You know, breakfast? Most important part of the day, Sammy."

"Oh, right," Sam says, staring at Dean and the perplexed look on his brother's face unblinkingly. "Thought you meant…"

Sam rubs a hand over his mouth and keeps the rest of that to himself. Dean is already turning his back on Sam, tossing things into his duffel the same way he does every morning before they check out. Like it's a totally regular day and he did not just spend the night having uncomfortably compelling dreams about incest.

"You planning to lie there all year, man?"

Sam shakes his head, going through the motions of getting up and dressed and packed to go. Dean is totally normal except for how he keeps giving Sam these confused, worried looks every time he catches Sam staring. And, sure, Sam is staring a whole lot, but he's just really confused and Dean is not making anything easier to comprehend. No matter how hard Sam looks, he can't find a single sign that Dean is disquieted by what was going on inside his head the night before, or that he even remembers it. He's exactly the same as always, which either means he's used to this or he forgot.

Sam flushes, wondering how a dream so vivid, so shameful and inviting at the same time, can be so easily forgotten, but that's the explanation he has to go with. It was a fluke. Sam is not equipped to handle the alternative.

"Bobby said not to get too excited, but he's pretty sure he's got a lead on Bela and the Colt." Dean waits for Sam's stilted nod before he continues, "I figure he'll call us back by the time we're done eating and then we can head in whatever direction that bitch is running."

"Yeah, that…sounds good," Sam answers slowly.

"Dude, are you okay?" Dean asks, stopping in front of Sam. His face draws close, and Sam nearly pulls back, afraid his brother is going to kiss him. Instead, Dean puts a hand on Sam's forehead, checking for fever, and Sam closes his eyes, trying to think of anything but the tender way he saw Dean touch him last night. "You seem out of it."

"I just didn't get enough sleep."

Sam coughs then, breaking away from the touch under the pretense of gathering his things up from the floor.

"You need more booze in your diet," Dean says, his head inclining toward the door after he picks up his own belongings. Sam walks in the direction indicated, not turning back so Dean can't see how red his face gets when his brother adds, "I sleep like a baby."

Babies don't have dreams like the one Dean was having last night, but Sam can't exactly bring that up. So he goes along for the rest of the day, growing more awkward with every minute Dean is _not_.

When he fails to find any hint of discomfort, Sam can't help looking for signs that maybe that was what Dean dreams about for a reason. But Dean doesn't act any differently than he usually does, his touches and looks don't linger, and his words are all the same obnoxious, overconfident big brother Sam's been putting up with his entire life. Sam can read his brother better than anything, there's no way Dean has been hiding something like this from him.

The only thing that's different is Sam. Sam is the one who's jumping every time Dean gets close to him, who keeps misinterpreting everything Dean says, and, Jesus, even after the dream, what kind of freak is Sam that he keeps _looking_ for signs that his brother wants to fuck him?

When they go to sleep that night, Sam doesn't even pretend he isn't going back into Dean's head. He has to know, and this is the fastest way to put the questions to rest. He'll dip in, see that Dean is dreaming about Britney Spears in her schoolgirl getup or something, and never intrude on his brother's space again. He learned his lesson about poking into Dean's dreams. He just needs to be sure it was a one-time thing.

The dream Sam walks into is completely different from the one the night before, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Dean is sitting on the couch in an open living room. Sam can't place it, but he recognizes bits and pieces of it. A couch from the room they stayed in over Christmas in Michigan, white and blue walls from a haunted bed and breakfast they worked a few years back in Maine. There are other things, too, things Sam recognizes but can't recall where he saw them, but the most important thing is that there is no Sam to be seen.

"Hey," he says, walking around the couch and sitting next to Dean. "What's up?"

Dean jumps in his seat when he hears Sam's voice like he's being startled out of a dream, which is really just silly as far as Sam is concerned. "Sam?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Me."

Dean smiles a bit, but he turns his face away before Sam can really read into it. He looks down at his lap. "You're late," he tells Sam. "I thought you weren't coming."

"Oh." Sam wants to ask what he's late for, but there's a good chance Dean doesn't even know. And it doesn't matter. He's here now, with Dean, which is all he really wanted to begin with. "Sorry?"

Dean shakes his head, looking up. "No, it's okay. I'm just glad you're here."

He leans over then, and his lips find Sam's like it's instinct, soft and expectant and opening just a bit as he makes contact. Sam puts his hands up, pushing Dean away. "What the fuck are you doing, Dean?"

"I thought…" Dean frowns, but his eyes don't leave Sam's. He doesn't look sorry. "So this is gonna be one of those dreams? You can go ahead and get started, then."

"Get started on what?" Sam asks. He's still shaking a little, holding his fingers up to his lips. Dean just kissed him and it was actually him, not some dream version of him, and fuck, that's his brother he can still feel wet against his mouth.

"You hate me," Dean says. "I disgust you. Go on, Sam, you know the script. I know you do."

"I don't hate you," Sam says, reaching out for Dean. He stops halfway there, not sure how to go about touching a brother who wants what Dean just tried to take. "I could never hate you."

Dean laughs coldly and his eyes follow Sam's hands as they hover awkwardly in the air between them. "But I sure do disgust you. Won't even touch your big brother now, huh?"

"You tried to kiss me," Sam says stupidly. He's not even sure why this is all still so shocking after last night.

"I try to kiss you all the time," Dean replies unabashedly. "I like the nights you let me better."

"But you’re my brother."

Dean smiles, but it’s sad now, nothing like the one Sam had seen on Dean's face the night before, and he feels guilty. He had control over which smile his brother was going to wear tonight, and even knowing he's the one pushing away when he's supposed to doesn't stop him from looking like the bad guy.

"I don't care what you say. Sam doesn't hate me. It's a dream. It's just a dream." Dean's voice is damn near begging. Sam hasn't heard Dean sound needy like this in years. He's pretty sure he was dead the last time Dean sounded like this. "I can't hurt him here," he says, leaning in again. He doesn't try to kiss Sam, just pushes his face into Sam's neck, and Sam's arms wrap around him before he can think about why. "I can't hurt him, he doesn't have to know. I can have you here."

Sam feels Dean pressing so close into his skin. His nose rubs against Sam's neck, and he laughs, sounding drunk. "You know I'd never hurt you out there," he promises, and yeah, Sam does know that. "But this won't hurt anyone. Who am I hurting?"

Dean pulls back, looks up at Sam with pleading eyes. Dean never asks Sam for anything. "It's not so wrong. If I can't help wanting it. It's better than—I'm not hurting my Sammy."

He wasn't. Not until Sam poked his nose where it didn't belong and now he knows what Dean's tried so hard to hide from him. He never had a right to know this. He never would have wanted to know this. It ruins everything Sam thought he knew. It's too damn much at once, and Sam can't remember being this confused in his life.

Dean moves back after a while, forcing Sam's arms away. He looks at Sam dead in the eye, an expression on his face like he's going to war and Sam's the enemy. "Say what you want," he says. "I don't care. Tell me I'm dirt. I'll dream better tomorrow."

"Do I really do that?" Sam asks. "Do you really think that I would do that to you?"

Dean shrugs. "I can't control you all the time. Not even in my dreams."

"Is that what you want? To control me?"

"I want to control myself. I want to make it through my last few months of this and finally stop having to worry I'll break one day." Dean shakes his head, smiling again as he puts his hand on Sam's cheek. "I want Sam to bury a brother he can remember fondly, not some fucking pervert who—"

"Why do you keep talking like I'm not here?"

"You're not Sam," Dean replies bitingly. "In my dreams, Sam wants to kiss me."

"So who am I, then?"

"My conscience, if I've still got one," Dean says, shrugging. "Otherwise you're just here to make me feel guilty in its absence."

Sam shakes his head. "I don't want to do that, Dean."

Dean's fingers run up the fabric of Sam's shirt and he tugs at the collar, looking like he's thinking of kissing Sam again. Sam freezes up in anticipation, but Dean just laughs at his reaction. "In that case, I think I'd better wake up now."

They sit up at the same time in their motel room. Dean looks over at Sam, his expression tense for a second before it smoothes over. He smiles, but Sam thinks it looks more strained than it usually does, and he can't help wondering if he's always seemed this forced on mornings after he had bad dreams and Sam just didn't realize.

"Rise and shine," he says, like clockwork. Same old clock running down and down. Sam is nearly out of time, and Dean just told him he was okay with that. Sam can't even fight him on it, because he's not really supposed to know. He'll blow his cover.

"You're annoying," Sam says, tossing his comforter at Dean's stupid, smiling face.

Dean snickers, yells something out about picking tampons up for him at the store, and Sam is terrified what it says about him that he almost wants to run back into the room and give Dean that kiss he asked for last night if he'll just promise to make every morning of Sam's life as insufferable as he's making this one.

Sam doesn't even know why he goes back the next night. He's run out of excuses to feed himself. He needs to see his brother. He can't sleep anymore without it. Dean is so closed off to him during the day, hiding so many things Sam never would have guessed at. Even if the things he said last night scare Sam, there was a rawness—honesty, straightforward instead of drowned in bullshit—that made Sam feel closer to Dean than he's ever been. And okay, maybe that means accepting that his brother is in love with him, or wants to fuck him, or whatever, but Sam can't care.

"Sammy, wake up," Dean reaches out, shaking a cold, limp hand. "Sam, please, you're scaring me."

Sam can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he looks around the dream and recognizes where they are. _Not this_ , he thinks. He doesn't want Dean to dream about this. He doesn't want to be reminded in here. This is the kind of thing he's running from.

"It's not funny," he says. "Please don't do this. Sammy, wake up."

Sam walks over to the chair Dean's pulled to the side of the bed and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder. "I'm awake."

Dean looks at him, and Sam makes sure the dead body is gone before he turns back for it. Dean reaches out, hands fumbling blindly on the empty mattress, and then he glares up at Sam.

"It wasn't funny," he says.

"I know, Dean. I'm sorry," Sam says, attempting to sit across from him. Dean reaches out and stops him.

He looks at the bed. "No, don't sit there. I don't want you there." 

Sam wills the bed away. "Dean, what's wrong? There's nothing there."

Dean looks at him blankly, and then his eyebrows draw together. "I don't remember," he says. "Something was."

"Close your eyes," Sam tells him.

Dean obeys. Sam concentrates on finding something Dean will like, and when Dean opens his eyes again, they're in a bowling alley in East Michigan, Sam standing and Dean sprawled in one seat with his legs out over the other. Dean had loved this place when they'd been working the job, even though they'd both stunk at bowling. The girl at the counter had been cute, and they'd had to come back for four days straight before they figured out who the ghost they were hunting was. Dean loves any hunt that gets him laid regularly as a rule.

Dean looks around, his face a little surprised at first. "Are we bowling?"

"No," Sam replies. He takes the uncomfortable plastic chair next to his brother's, kneeing Dean's feet out of his space. Sam has a cold bottle of Dean's favorite El Sol brew in each of his hands and he passes one over. "We're sitting and watching other people bowl."

"You just don't wanna lose to me," Dean says, smirking as he takes a sip from his bottle.

Sam sighs and rolls his eyes and manages to resist the urge to challenge Dean to a game just because he could get a perfect score in here. The dream will go however he wants.

"Bet you couldn't play if you wanted," Dean continues, kicking his newly displaced feet up onto the table meant for scorecards. "Bet they don't rent shoes big enough for you, sasquatch."

"Bite me," Sam replies. They'd had shoes in his size. He had to squeeze a bit, sure, but not that much. "Aren't you gonna go hit on the concession girl? Come back smelling like nacho cheese?"

Dean looks over at him with bright eyes. "Jealous? I can get you free nachos too, Sammy. All you have to do is ask."

"Eww." Sam wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a part of your sick snack-sex trade."

Dean smiles faintly, throwing a brief glace over his shoulder toward the concession stand, and Sam follows his gaze on instinct. "She's not here," Dean says. Sam can't help wondering if he's just stating the obvious—there's no one behind the counter—or if it means something more. It sounds like it means something more, in that untraceable way Dean has of saying things that mean everything in completely trivial ways.

"I guess not," Sam replies. "She could be."

Dean huffs out a quiet laugh and hits Sam's thigh lightly with his beer. "Don't need anyone else in here."

Sam gets it then, and wishes it didn't make him feel so good to know he's all his brother needs or wants.

They lie low for a couple of weeks after the shit hits the fan in Colorado. They're dead again, technically, Henriksen managed to get that much down in writing before Lilith crashed the party, but their faces were all over the news, and Sam doesn't want to risk walking in somewhere and being recognized.

They shouldn't be hunting in their current states, anyway. Bela and the Colt have gone off the map again, Ruby's pissed, Dean is all torn up and guilty about the deaths in Monument—as if he fucking planned them—and Sam just plain doesn't like the idea of parading his brother around when he can still so clearly picture the charred remains of the police station they'd seen on the news. That's who Lilith is, what she's capable of, and she's looking for him and Dean.

Sam just wants to hide his brother for the next few months, until the deal is due, and make sure whatever comes for Dean has to go through him first. 

How they end up on some beach in Massachusetts, Sam will never know. Their dad worked a case there eight years back, but that's just the excuse Dean uses to get them there. Free housing from a grateful widow. One of those summer homes that stays empty nine months of the year, stocked kitchen and all, a better situation than they'd have found anywhere else, Sam knows that. But he doesn't think that's why Dean chose to make this their hideout.

Dean's always liked the beach. Now he goes out every morning and sits on the shore, cold breezes blowing past him as he stares at waves crashing on sand. He looks thoughtful, not like himself, but then he doesn't bother with the mask out here. Sam pretends he doesn’t see. But he watches from the kitchen window, traces the moment his brother's expression gets far off and every bit as terrified as it should be.

He stays in usually. Washes the dishes or pretends he's sleeping, as if he can ever actually rest these days when Dean's not dreaming for him. But today there's something different, and Sam feels an ache to go distract his brother, so he shuffles past the wooden table on the wooden floor and lets the wooden door slam shut behind him.

"Coffee," Sam says, handing Dean a cup and lowering himself carefully to sit in the sand without spilling it.

Dean blinks his way back into the present and smiles at Sam thankfully.

"It's getting warmer," Sam says after a minute or so of silence. "Bet the water's swimmable by now."

Dean nods absently. Mid-April in Massachusetts, the water's likely to freeze like knives, but Dean's got worse coming and they both know it. Spring coming on and chasing the winter away isn't the comfort it usually is this year. It was warm when Sam died.

They sit for another five minutes of dead air, and Sam's trying to figure out what to say that won't just upset them both further. He almost wants to run out into the sea and drown himself just for a conversation starter.

As he's musing on whether the cold would be worth it, Dean suddenly says, "You remember sandcastles, Sam?"

Sam laughs, caught off guard. "Are you asking me if I remember what sandcastles are, or—?"

"You must've been six or something. Dad took us to some beach and let us run off and play, and we made these sandcastles." He shakes his head. "Really crappy excuses for sandcastles in retrospect, but man, you loved them. Thought it was the best damn thing you'd ever done. Dad kept trying to take us back to the motel or to dinner or something, but you kept begging to stay, so I did too. We stayed out so long me and Dad got these sunburns." Dean turns to Sam and makes a circle about the size of a quarter with his fingers. "Boils this big."

"Yeesh," Sam says.

"Yeah," Dean agrees, but he's smiling. "You were a little red and peeling, but nothing like me and Dad. I think you wanted to go back the next day. Fucking stupidly happy over the sand, I'll never forget it."

Sam looks over at his brother and doesn't bother asking if that has anything to do with how much he loves beaches. He moves his hand closer to Dean's, hesitating before touching it, and realizes he wants to kiss him. Without an excuse, not because Dean wants it, but just because he's Dean and Sam pushed him away when he had the chance, and he's going to have so few chances. He's not even dreaming, not clinging to that comfort Dean finds in hiding it away in his head.

He wants to kiss Dean, and, instead of thinking of all the ways that's wrong, Sam finds himself wondering if in some other, better world, where they're not brothers and they're not dying, do they get to roll around in the tide and smile into each other's mouths, saltwater making the kiss taste like brine and their eyes sting? Do they get to stumble back to the washed out wooden house, fighting over whose fault it is that they have sand in their trunks and not really caring about the itch?

"I know you want me to be sorry," Dean says. It's almost a whisper, but Sam knows that has more to do with how close to cracking his words are than with trying to hide them from Sam. "I know I should be. But I'm not."

It's the most honest he's been with Sam, awake at least, since he made that deal. It still makes Sam feel sick.

"I'm going in," Sam says. "You coming with?"

Dean shakes his head, a smile so small it's not really there at the corner of his mouth. "I think I'm gonna test out my sandcastle skills," he says playfully.

He does, points it out to Sam through the kitchen window after lunch. Sam catches himself pushing curtains aside to peek at it throughout the day, but of course it gets washed away as the tide rolls in, and all that's left by night is a lumpy carcass that used to be special.

He's at the table with Lisa. Sam never went into her house, but he's sure this is what it looked like from the inside. White walls and hardwood floors, and pictures of her and Ben smiling from every flat surface. Of course, Dean's in them, and that's a change, but not one that doesn't fit seamlessly into the surroundings.

Sam leans in close and peers at one, gets a shiver of ugly jealousy from the way Dean's got his arm around Lisa, and turns away.

"Come sit," he hears Dean say from the dining room. "It's almost dinnertime."

Sam does as he's told, though he throws a few uncomfortable looks Dean's way as he does so. Lisa is directly across from him, but when Sam settles down he looks over and finds Dean is watching him instead of her. Dean reaches out, resting his hand lightly over Sam's, and Sam knows it's rude, but he doesn't pull away.

"What about—?" he starts before he turns to see that Lisa's disappeared. Dean is still looking at him, and the kid who runs in, yelling something out excitedly, looks more like Sam than the copy of Dean Ben had turned out to be.

"Hide-and-go-seek," a Sam that must by about five says to Dean. He tugs on the bottom of Dean's jeans and Dean laughs.

"All right, all right. Go hide, I'll come for you." Dean reaches out to ruffle Sam's hair and grins, shaking his head as he watches the child run off. "I swear, that kid's gonna make me old before my time."

 _If only_ , Sam thinks, but he doesn't get a chance to say anything.

The child version of him stomps back into the dining room. He's aged a couple of years and puts his hands on his hips, his expression cross. "You're not counting," he accuses Dean. "You have to count and then come looking."

"I'll come for you," Dean promises. "I'm on 68."

Seven-year-old Sam watches Dean suspiciously for a long moment, then sighs. "Okay. But you have to count _out loud_ or I won't know when you're coming and that's cheating."

"67," Dean announces loudly, and the kid smiles brightly and flees into the kitchen.

Dean looks back to Sam. "I fucking hate hide-and-go-seek," he confesses.

Sam smirks. "Your secret's safe with me," says Sam, even though technically he's the same person Dean is trying to keep the secret from.

"Good," he says, smiling.

"Ready or not," a voice calls from the kitchen doorway, and Dean's expression freezes up from the happy, relaxed one a minute ago. He doesn't look up, keeps his eyes meticulously trained on the dining room table, but Sam can't help looking.

Sam has reappeared from the room he ran into, but he's not seven anymore. He's probably somewhere between 15 and 16, the year he had more growth spurts than meals and realized he was going to outgrow his brother soon, outgrow hunting and Dad's orders and their whole claustrophobic life if he didn't get out. He's not wearing a shirt, just holding himself up against the frame of the door, his fingers on his chest and a dark look on his face. Sam almost wants to laugh at himself, the awkward stretch of too much bone covered by not enough muscle and skin, but there's something terribly ugly about the way he's looking at Dean.

"Go away," says Dean. "Please go away."

"What's wrong, you don't want to play with me?" he asks.

Dean looks up, then away immediately as if what he saw wounded him. And the teenaged version of Sam steps closer. He's teasing Dean, Sam realizes. It's torture, and the really sad thing about it is it's Dean's brain doing it to himself. Sam nearly questions why Dean would ever think of him this way, then wonders if this is what it had really been like for Dean. All those times Sam's slept half-naked or changed in front of him, thinking it was just the necessity of living in close quarters. God, but he was tormenting Dean all along, and Dean just took it.

Sam knows if Dean had said something earlier, it wouldn't have gone well. It would have been too much at once, and Sam would have been disgusted or afraid. He wouldn't have understood, just like he didn't understand weeks ago, but he understands now. He understands and he wants to go back in time and shake himself, tell his younger self to grab Dean and never run away to school and take everything he can get from him, because one day he would want it and it would be too late. Dean would be lost.

"Don't look at me," the other Sam says. "Is that the game now? You're bad at that game."

"Can you believe how stupid they are?" Dean says to Sam, ignoring the other one.

Sam feels his eyebrows drawing together, confused that Dean is talking to him at all and not really knowing what he's talking about. "Who?"

"The demons. They let me have you back. They let me have you back for free." He smiles to himself miserably. "I was going to Hell either way. Sold my soul a long time ago."

Sam feels his hands curl into fists and stands up, turning to face the other Sam. The nasty smile on his teenage face clouds over when he gets a look at Sam's expression, and good. Sam wants him scared. He's inches shorter and much thinner, and Sam uses that to his advantage, marches up to himself until they're so close he can't take another step. He towers over the teenager.

Sam doesn't have to share Dean, not even with himself, and he sure as fuck won't share Dean with this.

"You leave," he says. "Leave right now."

The other Sam dissipates in front of his eyes and Sam turns to the table, sitting right back where he'd been before. He reaches out and grabs Dean's hand and pulls it toward himself.

"Where were we?" he asks Dean.

Dean gives him a grateful look and they have their dinner.

"Fucking idiots," Dean mutters, his eyes searching Sam's as he holds his face up for inspection. "Next time, I swear. They'll think the rotting fish was a Christmas present."

"They're just kids, Dean," Sam replies, fidgeting.

"Sit still, would you?" Dean sighs. "They're kids, yeah, but they keep getting into shit they don't belong in. Ghostfacers, my ass. They're all gonna end up dead at this rate. All for some crappy TV show? How's your head feeling?"

"I don’t have a concussion, Dean," Sam snaps, shoving his hands away. "I told you, the ghost didn't rough me up that bad. Would you quit prodding me?"

"No," Dean gets up and goes digging through his bag for the first aid kit. "Anyway, you okay about the other stuff? Don't wanna talk about it?"

He sits back down in front of Sam, still looking overcritical, like Sam's head is going to crack in half any minute.

"Dude, after Broward I'm kind of desensitized to watching people die."

Dean pauses, stops right in the middle of wetting a hand towel with alcohol so it begins to drip through the cloth and onto his jeans. Sam realizes what he said a moment too late and can't do anything but look away. He's sorry the kid died, but he can't get torn up about it. He has less than a month before that's Dean again. There's no room to care about anything else.

He shakes his head, trying to look contrite. "No, I don't need to talk about it. I'm fine. And since when do you wanna talk?"

"It's not the same," Dean says, wiping blood and grime away from the cut under Sam's eye. "Anyway, I was just offering."

It stings a little, but Dean is gentle after Sam flinches, and Sam can't help thinking of the way his fingers had moved so slow and careful down his spine the first night he walked into one of Dean's dreams. And now that light touch on his cheek makes him swallow and will away all the thoughts popping up, but it makes him feel something, too. Something the dreams couldn't make him feel. A low, hot something curling in his belly, and he flushes, ashamed by how good he's suddenly realized this could be.

Dean clears his throat, and Sam shakes his head, focusing back on his brother. Dean is smiling out of one side of his mouth. "You need to get out more, Sammy."

Sam blanches when he realizes he's half hard and Dean's noticed. He tries to readjust himself, but of course it's too late for that. Dean only barks out a laugh at him, and Sam marvels at how cool he plays it. No one could ever know from the mocking look on his brother's face that this was his idea to begin with, that he dreams about this and made Sam dream about it, too. Sam never would have thought of it on his own, and yet Dean is playing this off like a big brother is supposed to and Sam is the one left feeling like there's something wrong with him.

He shoves Dean away. "Look, I'm not hurt. I just need a shower."

"Yeah, make it a cold one," Dean yells to his back as Sam hurries out of the room.

By the time he gets out, Dean is dozing with the television set turned almost all the way up. Sam picks up the remote and turns it off and wonders if maybe this has gone far enough. If he should stop before he intrudes on Dean again and can't stop himself from doing something he won't be able to take back.

But as soon as he falls asleep, of course, the choice seems obvious. Dean said it himself. It's just dreams; it doesn't matter if it's just dreams. It won't count if it's just dreams.

It isn't usually a bed in these dreams, that's what Sam's learned. More nights than not, he watches Dean do something to him, touch or kiss or hold or fuck, but not since that first night has it been on a mattress. Now Dean is hovering over Sam on a huge, four-poster bed. The sheets are the same shade of dark red as the walls and floors and curtains around it, making Dean stand out against all the burgundy.

The dream version of Sam is sitting up just enough to reach Dean's zipper. His eyes are locked on Dean's as he slowly pulls it down. Dean licks his lips, smiling wickedly, and Sam hates that he's looking at anyone like that, even if it is just another version of him.

He steps forward, clearing his throat. Dean looks over, but under him the other Sam pays him no attention. He only has eyes for Dean, so he presses his palm flat against Dean's stomach and traces a line up his chest.

Dean doesn't look away from Sam, though, which makes Sam feel smug in the stupidest way possible. His hand reaches down, catching the other Sam's wrist and holding it away from himself.

"God, that's hot," he says, voice all breathy. The leg that was straddling the dream Sam eases away, and he falls onto his side, but even now his eyes are on Sam's. "Can't fucking think through how hot that is."

Sam takes another step toward them, almost against his own will, and feels a chill run all the way down his body, sparking in his toes. The Sam on the bed is completely naked, and Dean is leaning down to whisper something into his ear. The dream nods, reaching out once Sam is close enough to the bed, and beginning to undo Sam's jeans as eagerly as he'd been working on Dean's.

"What—?" Sam begins to ask, but he's cut off by the surprise of feeling a mouth press against the jut of his hip and moans instead of finishing.

"Two of you. I get two of you. Almost don't know what to do with all that." Dean licks his lips again and smiles as his voice grows darker. "But I bet you do."

Dean reaches out, pressing his hand to the small of the other Sam's back, and the dream stops sucking at Sam's skin, pulling away like he understands the command. Sam thinks he could understand his brother's touches just as easily. Better. He could be better, this is just some dream.

Sam pulls his shirt off over his head and lets the hands pulling on his hips tug him forward into bed. It's not until the dream Sam grips his shoulder and shoves him down into the mattress that he realizes how much bigger Sam is in Dean's head. Larger than life. Sam can't fight the hold the other man is exerting over him and it scares him until he sees the way Dean is watching them.

Sam can't kiss his brother. Can't touch Dean. Isn't supposed to want to. But there's no reason he shouldn't let himself do whatever Dean wants him to. Not when Dean is watching them like he's never seen anything better than too much Sam.

Sam stops struggling, lays back and lets the weight of himself push down on top of him. It's heavy, so heavy it's stifling, but god, the other Sam starts moving inside of him—no preparation needed in the dream—and it's better than anything Sam's ever felt. Sam wonders if this is what Dean always feels like. This impossible crushing sensation of too much, and if it is, Sam can't blame his brother for wanting him.

His head falls back and he lets out a cry, and then he looks over at Dean. Dean's got his hands shoved into his half-open jeans, his fist working quickly. His lip is caught between teeth, but he's looking at Sam with all this want and pride and Sam doesn't know what's happening until he realizes he's awake.

His boxers are soaked through with come. He's shaking. Dean is still asleep in the bed next to him, but Sam can see his hips working against the blankets, and Sam's not even ashamed anymore. He wants Dean to approve of him the way he just did in that dream. He wants to see that gleam in Dean's eyes for real and satisfy his brother for once instead of Dean sacrificing everything for him. He wants Dean to get one thing he wants, just this one thing, and maybe then he'll learn better than to give up the rest.

"I think you're pretty," Sam says. "Am I allowed to think that?"

"Absolutely not," Dean replies. He pokes at Sam with a plastic sword and Sam wobbles in his canoe. Why Dean has a plastic sword in his canoe, or why they are in canoes at all, Sam will never know. Dreams are fucking weird, he decides.

Sam is holding a wizard's staff. He doesn't even know what the hell he's supposed to do with that, but it extends farther than Dean's sword, so he's got one advantage. He reaches out and starts nudging at Dean's canoe, and Dean tries to block him, which is what sends him tumbling over the side. The boat capsizes, making Sam the winner.

He stands in his canoe, holding his hands above his head with the wizard staff and crying out in victory. Dean emerges from the water and watches his display for half a second before growling, tackling up onto Sam's boat and causing Sam to fall back, head and ass first into the murky green water.

"Fuck you," Sam says, spraying Dean with the water that got into his mouth when he reaches the surface. He swims forward and jumps up, lying on top of his overturned canoe. Dean does the same on the other side. "You're just jealous I won."

Dean smiles and leans forward to kiss Sam. Sam turns his face away, not because he doesn't want it but because he wants it so much it scares him and none of that makes it acceptable.

"Sam," Dean says, quiet and imploring, and Sam turns back to look at him. His face makes Sam's chest tight. "Kiss me."

Ah, what the hell. He asked nicely. Sam closes his eyes and leans over the canoe and takes Dean's mouth with his own. Dean is ready for him, lips open and tongue sliding just right on Sam's. It's not the first time for Dean, but it's the first for Sam, and he gets carried away, so lost he doesn't know when they shift scenes. When he opens his eyes, they're sitting on a white couch instead of in a lake, though they're still drenched.

"Let's do that again some time," Sam murmurs as he pulls away.

"Like I know how to stop." Dean laughs. "I wish I knew how to quit you," he says, doing his best gay cowboy accent, which would be most people's worst. Still, it makes Sam crack up.

"Do you?" Sam asks once he's recovered himself.

Dean's laughter dims to a smile, but it's still a real one, so bright and playful and goddamn happy it hurts. He closes his mouth and shakes his head, reaching out to press a hand to Sam's cheek as he kisses him again.

When they break the kiss, Dean slides his palm onto Sam's thigh and moves it slowly up. "Hey, want me to suck your dick?"

Sam snorts. "You're so sentimental," he says. "I thought we were having a moment."

"Did you want the blowjob or not?"

Dean's fingers work open the top button of Sam's jeans and he hesitates, looking at Sam eagerly for his response. Sam shifts, letting the bulge of his cock get a little more friction against the pressure Dean is supplying. "I mean, if you're just handing them out."

"That would be a handjob," Dean replies, smartass that he is, but before Sam can respond he's got Sam's cock free and is wrapping his hand around it and diving down into Sam's lap on that couch as if this is old hat for him.

"Fuck," Sam curses as Dean takes him—all of him—in one greedy slide. His brother looks smug when he pulls up the first time, lips all wet with drool and already swelling from taking so much. Sam can't help it, he pushes Dean back down and fucks his mouth.

When he finishes, Dean comes up with jizz on his bottom lip and a triumphant expression, and Sam kisses him, curious what it'll taste like. Of course it's a dream, so he can't really taste it, but he still sucks just a bit harder on Dean's tongue just in case.

"Wanna return the favor?" Dean murmurs against Sam's neck, and Sam groans.

He does, he really does, but as soon as Dean gets his dick out, Sam realizes with horror that he has no idea what to do. Dean is hard for him, a drop of precome crowning the dark head of his cock, and Sam knows the basic premise, but he also knows it takes practice to do what Dean just did to him. Sam's never given a blowjob before, never even dreamed of it. He's going to be bad at it, he's going to disappoint Dean, and then Dean will realize just how cheap he sold his soul. How undeserving Sam is of every little thing he's ever given.

It's a lot of pressure Sam's putting on this blowjob, but in the moment all of his concerns seem valid. He takes Dean's hand instead, slowly bringing it to his lips, and sucks three of his brother's fingers in. He imitates the bobbing motion Dean had been so perfect at, and Dean watches him through heavy-lidded eyes. It's a dream, so Sam's sorry excuse for stimulation is enough. Dean moans and writhes and Sam keeps sucking until he comes untouched.

Sam wakes up still hungry for Dean. It's really kind of awkward. Apart from the obvious problem of it being his brother's dick Sam can't stop thinking about, the case they've been working has Dean all kinds of moody and depressed—with good reason—and the only way to cheer him up that Sam can think of is _hey, I know we're really not supposed to do this, but if you don't mind that I'll be bad at it, I'd really like to try blowing you_. Which is probably just not the way to chase away the daddy issues this crocotta hunt brought up.

"This show sucks," Dean says, his voice sulky and his lips pouting in a way that's way more attractive than it should be right now. He reaches over, right above Sam's lap, leaning in, and it's just like the dream. Sam freezes, terrified that one wrong move will alert Dean to the fact that they are awake and this is not allowed and make him stop. His blood is all rushing to his dick, but then Dean sits back up, the remote in his hand, and Sam realizes he was just reaching for it. Not about to make the dream come true after all. Dean switches off the television. "Let's go out."

Sam's ready for bed. He's still pissed, and a part of him wants to gloat. This is what Dean gets for his distractions. They worked a case they shouldn't have been working, and Dean got hurt. Anyone else would take the hint and turn his attention onto breaking the deal, like Sam's been telling Dean to do for months, but instead Dean wants to go out and drown his problems—ignore them as if they have any fucking time for that—and there's no way Sam's letting him go to a bar alone in his current state.

They get hammered, and that's putting it mildly. After a couple of hours and way too many close calls, Sam is tired of swaying too close to his brother, catching Dean's scent and finding the words on the tip of his tongue. Fuck me. Let me fuck you. I want to suck you. I want to kiss you. I want to die so you don't have to.

"I wanted it to be dad," Dean says, his voice starting to slur. Sam knows he's sloshed, Dean's been pretty wasted for an hour and a half now, but he didn't realize it had gotten to the point where words start rushing together.

"I know you did, Dean," Sam replies, turning away so Dean can't see his eyes roll as he takes another shot of whiskey. "Of course you did, but it wasn't."

"I wanted him to tell me." Dean wipes his mouth with his hand and then keeps going, "He said the wrong thing, anyway. I should have known it wasn't him. He didn't tell me what I wanted."

Sam pauses, listening a bit harder, but Dean doesn't add anything. "Wanted him to tell you what? How to get out of Hell?"

About Hell, probably. That's what Sam would want to ask Dad if he could right now. What's it like? Is there any way it could be worse than being topside, being topside and alone? Who won this round, was it Sam or Dean? Because Sam's not really sure.

"Good job," Dean says, laughing quietly. "Good job, son. I'm proud."

If Sam weren't fresh out of eye rolls, that would get one. Dean is too damn old for this. "He saw you kill the demon," Sam points out. "He was proud of you then."

Dean shakes his head. "Not that."

"What then?"

"I saved you. That was my job and I did, I saved you." Dean smoothes his hand out on the bar surface and glowers down at it. "I fucking did it and you just want to find a way to take it back. You want to make me fuck it up again, but Dad would know. I just wanted someone to acknowledge that I did the right thing."

Sam stares at his brother, incredulous, and gets the urge to choke him until he can't say anything stupid like that ever again. It's amazingly complex, wanting so bad to kill someone Sam knows he can't live without, but then, he's drunk and belligerent and maybe needs to get away from Dean instead of trying to think the impulse through.

"You didn't do the right thing," Sam replies. He doesn’t care anymore that this is Dean's last year (last month) and it should be as good for Dean as possible. He's not indulging that, not now. "You did the worst thing you could have, and I hate you for it."

"I know you're mad—" Dean reaches out and grabs Sam's arm, looking up. His face is practically liquid, eyes watery and mouth wet and everything drooping like raindrops tracking their way down a window. Sam wants to put his mouth against Dean's and swallow him and keep him locked inside forever. "Don't say you hate me, Sam. I know you don't mean it, but I can't stand hearing it."

Sam empties his cup and slams it on the counter, shoving Dean's hand away. "I'm getting another drink."

Dean nods and shrugs and goes back to staring at the liquid in front of him as Sam stomps across the room to get the bartender's attention. He pushes past a crowd of people trying to get drinks, not really in the mood to be polite, and leans forward with his money extended. He sees Dean in the mirror behind the bar and watches him as he waits for the bartender to make her way to him. A girl has taken the spot Sam vacated next to him and Dean is talking to her now, as if Sam doesn't even fucking exist.

"Not that you need another one," Sam hears someone say beside him. "But can I buy you a drink?"

Sam looks away from Dean and finds some douche with long black hair and skeevy facial hair smiling at him. He attempts to wave the guy away, but the man is holding his elbow. Helping him stay vertical, maybe.

Sam wonders if Dean can see. This is the fourth girl Dean's talked to tonight, and even if he hasn't actually made a move on any of them, the fact that he's paying them any attention at all has been making Sam's cheeks burn with embarrassment and jealousy and anger and so many months of this pent up lust that's all Dean's fault but which Dean is going to do nothing about.

Sam doesn't bother being gracious. "I'm good."

The man doesn't let go. "I'm Jason," he says.

"I'm not into—" Sam starts, but before he can say dick, he thinks of the dream last night, of how badly he had wanted it. A slow smile curls his lips. He doesn't care if he's bad at it for this guy. This guy can be practice, and then Sam can be good, and then he can fill up on Dean until he isn't breathing anything but his brother. "Outside."

Jason looks taken aback by the sudden change, but he nods, allowing Sam to grab his jacket and tug him toward the bar's back entrance. As soon as they get to the alley outside, Sam shoves the stranger up against the brick wall and falls to his knees.

Sam fights with the man's pants, then lets go in exasperation when they prove too complicated. "Too drunk to—"

Jason reaches down, freeing his cock and stroking himself a few times until he's fully hard. Sam stares, hoping it'll be like a puzzle and the solution will present itself if he thinks hard enough. That doesn't happen, so Sam leans forward tentatively, licking at the head, then slowly taking the guy into his mouth.

He goes inch by inch, doesn't get much before the guy thrusts and Sam pulls away, gagging.

"You new at this or something?" Jason asks, chuckling at Sam.

Sam's not drunk enough to not want to punch him, but he is drunk enough to ignore the question and move forward and try again. He gets a little further this time, and Jason holds himself still, not thrusting now that he knows Sam can't take it. Sam moves up and down, and after a bit he can feel and hear Jason starting to get into it, but it's not enough. Anyone's mouth can feel good, Sam has to actually be good. He has to be good for Dean, or he won't deserve him.

He drags his mouth up the shaft, letting the man's cock fall away and rub against his chin. "Show me what's good," he says, not looking up so he doesn't see that this is the wrong person. "Make it good."

Sam feels Jason's body moving as the man nods, and then there's a hand in his hair, gripping the back of his head and pulling him in. He finds that he kind of likes the pain of being led like that, and even though it's hard to breathe and messy, Sam closes his eyes and pretends it's Dean and he loves every second of it, right until the man comes and his voice is wrong. Sam stumbles to his feet, his head spinning, and remembers that the person he was looking for is still inside the bar.

He wipes his mouth and heads back in, though Jason catches his arm as he begins to open the door. "You don't want to leave before I return the favor, do you?"

Sam laughs at him, shaking the arm away.

As soon as he's inside, Sam catches Dean watching the door. Dean's face goes dark, and Sam tracks his gaze as it moves from him to the man coming in behind him. Dean's hand is curled into a tight fist next to his bourbon, but he shakes his head a little, forcing an engaged expression as he looks down at the girl chatting away beside him and pretends he's listening to her. Sam knows within an hour Dean will fuck her in the back of their car and he'll smell her cheap perfume tomorrow morning.

It doesn't matter. He also knows who Dean will really be thinking of while he does it, and now Sam knows what that's like, too. She'll hardly be there at all as far as Dean is concerned, and that's how Sam wants it.

"I'm going back to the room," he tells Dean when he makes it across the bar.

Dean pretends not to be interested, nodding as if the black-haired woman in front of him is the most fascinating thing he's ever seen, but Sam throws a look over his shoulder on his way out the door. Dean is glaring at the guy Sam just blew instead of her and smiling with relief as Sam leaves the other man behind.

Dean dies that night.

Sam thinks he went into the wrong dream. He must have stayed in his own head instead of Dean's.

He leaves and tries to find another. There's only one, and that's his own, and Dean dies there, only it's different.

The next night, Dean dies.

And then the night after that.

Dean dies over and over again.

Every damn dream he goes into, all Sam sees is Dean and all of the insides that make up Dean when he's in one piece, which he isn't ever these days, except when he's awake, and even then, it depends what definition you're using.

Sam's good at dreamwalking, but even Sam can’t will this away.

He wakes up shaking and screaming. Dean does him the kindness of pretending not to hear or see it, and Sam returns the favor when it's Dean waking him with a shout.

There is one week left before Dean's deal comes due, and for the last four days, every time either of them goes to sleep, all Dean does is die and die and die and die.

If Sam has gone slightly crazy, no one has the right to criticize him. Dean certainly doesn't, and there's no one else to notice. Soon, there won't even be Dean.

37 hours, 23 minutes, there's no use counting the seconds.

Sam is aware of every molecule of his brother's body. The smell of him and the whiskey they had for dinner, the heat that rolls off him after a long day, the way his skin folds under his t shirt as he gets into the wrong bed. It's a cruel, overwhelming feeling of fullness, a consciousness of a hole that isn't there but which will be in 37 hours, 22 minutes, and fewer seconds by the second. Sam doesn't want to feel it, or anything, but there it is.

Dean is pushing back his covers, as if he is just going to crawl up on the mattress and sleep. They won't be sleeping tomorrow night, they'll be running, and the day after that Dean will be sleeping and Sam will be trying very hard not to throw his brother's sacrifice away by putting a bullet through the back of his head.

37 hours and 21 minutes.

Sam sits up, reaching out. He catches the back of Dean's elbow, and his brother turns to look at him, caught off guard.

"What's up?" Dean asks, all cool and collected.

 _Nothing much_ , Sam wants to say. _Just the end of the world._

Drama queen, Dean would call him. He'd laugh, and Sam would like the laugh very much until he remembers he only has so many hours left to hear it.

So Sam stays silent. He tugs, tugs on Dean's sleeve like a needy kid, because that's all he's ever been but it's not going to be all he gets to be before the end of this.

"What, Sam? What do you want? I'm tired."

"My bed," Sam says. He moves back enough to give Dean room to slide in, and Dean doesn't do it. He stands there and raises an eyebrow for half a minute, and Sam wants to know if he missed the memo or something. He's wasting time. They don't have half a minute. They have 37 hours and 19 minutes and where did the last two minutes go, anyway?

"Get in," Sam demands.

"Sam, I get that you're torn up about—" He stops himself, as if not mentioning the deal is going to make it go away, which is exactly the kind of stupid shit a guy who would sell his soul without stopping to think would buy into.

"Dean." Sam's hand is shaking now, still hanging onto Dean's sleeve by a few stubborn fingers. "Dean, you have to. I'm not asking."

"I can't," he replies, yanking his sleeve free. "If you knew why, I promise you—"

"Don't start," Sam says. "Don't you dare feed me your bullshit. I know what you're scared of and I'm telling you to get in. Get in, Dean, or I swear to fucking God, I'll—"

Sam can't even finish that. He cuts himself off with a sob, a pathetic dull sort of sound, and what the hell is he good for if he can't even make empty threats at his big brother?

Dean moves forward, unable to keep his distance in the face of Sam's grief. "Sammy."

Sam practically springs on him. He knows he has to catch Dean off guard because if he sees it coming, he'll stop Sam, and if Sam doesn't at least get a kiss before Dean leaves him, he'll—well. Not like things can get worse either way, but that's not the point right now.

Dean pulls away, of course. Good little soldier that he is. Sam chases his mouth, but he gets pushed back. "Sam, what are you—?"

"Please, please, please," Sam mutters. "Know you want it. I want it, too. Please."

"You don't want this, Sam. You're just confused because…" Dean wipes the back of his hand over his mouth and then looks at the wet line of Sam's spit being scrubbed off his skin. He laughs darkly. "No, you don't want it. You'll regret it in a day or two, and I can't let that happen."

"I've wanted it since I was a kid," Sam lies, because it's the lie Dean needs to hear, and he's not about to feel sorry. "I've always wanted you."

Deep down, Sam thinks it might not even be a lie. Even if he didn't get it before. Sam's always wanted Dean allover and inside and maybe he didn't realize it was possible, but that doesn't mean he didn't want it.

"Do you—?" Dean reaches out, putting his hand on Sam's cheek. "Sam, do you mean that?"

Sam nods and holds his breath until Dean's mouth is against his, stealing it out of him. Dean's fingers dig into Sam's shoulder as he kisses, pulls him closer and tighter and it hurts, it hurts, Dean is bruising him. Sam just wishes it hurt more.

He lies back, pulling Dean down on top of him, and now Dean follows. Now Dean crawls into bed beside him, his lips never leaving Sam's.

"Please," Sam murmurs, not even sure Dean can give him what he's really asking for. He pulls back so he can kiss more of Dean, and Dean turns his face away from Sam so Sam can have all the bare skin he could wish for.

"Tell me what you want," Dean says. "Tell me, Sammy, I'll do anything."

"You, Dean," Sam answers, shaking Dean a little by the fabric of the shirt he's holding so tight he might rip right through it. "And you took that from me. How could you do that? How could you, Dean?"

Dean's hands slip down, over Sam's chest. He holds his palm flat against Sam's heart and with his other hand he takes one of Sam's, forcing Sam to relinquish his hold on the shirt. Dean brings the fingers he's holding up to his lips and presses a kiss to them.

"I saved this," he whispers. "How can I be sorry when I saved this?"

His mouth moves, down to Sam's palm, and he kisses that too and says the same thing. Wrist. Forearm. The crease of Sam's elbow. Dean kisses Sam's bicep and shoulder and collarbone, every goddamn thing his mouth can land on is accounted for, and every step of the way, he whispers that he saved it. Saved it from what, Sam wants to ask, because he feels more damned than Dean seems to at the moment.

When he's done covering Sam in kisses, Dean comes up for air and looks down at Sam. Sam is crying, even though he knows that's against the rules, and Dean leans forward, kissing the salt right from Sam's cheeks, wiping tears away with the pads of his thumbs, like Sam's not even allowed to have that, and what gives him the goddamn right to take everything from Sam?

"Don't. Don't cry, Sammy." His voice is not bossy, just warm and tender, like he can ask nicely and Sam will stop feeling. "I'm not upset, so you shouldn't be. I was," he says, swallowing a lump. "I was upset. Not sorry, but I didn't wanna die. I was scared, it wasn't fair. But you kissed me. Sam, I don't care about dying anymore, okay? I got what I was living for."

Once. Just this once. But if he would stay, Sam would make sure Dean got it as often as he fucking wanted.

"What about what I'm living for?" Sam says. He's not even supposed to be living, but making him do it for no reason is just plain mean.

Dean ignores the question. He kisses Sam's neck, sucking at Sam's skin like he can just distract everything away and the most upsetting thing about it is that he can. Sam could close his eyes and focus on the feel of that and forget everything he wants to forget. But that's just going to waste time—Sam knows what Dean's up to.

Sam takes Dean's hand and pushes it low down his body, making his request without the awkwardness of trying to ask for it. There are no words for what Sam needs Dean to do to him, fuck is too crass and Dean would laugh at the alternative.

Dean shoves his hand right down Sam's boxers, his fingers press against Sam's hole. Sam shivers, spreading his legs.

"That what you want?" Dean asks, the words vibrating against his neck. Sam nods. Dean won’t see him nod, but Sam knows he'll get it.

One finger pushes past the ring of muscles, and Sam gasps. Dean's finger is dry, the intrusion feels weird and new, but it's Dean, Dean feeling him out and mapping him.

"I've got lube," Dean says, his finger wiggling experimentally inside of Sam. "And condoms."

"Bring the lube," Sam says, putting a hand on Dean's cheek and kissing Dean as he pulls his hand free. Suddenly the empty space feels like more of an invasion than the finger had. "No condom."

Sam needs to feel Dean's skin return to his. If Dean gets deep enough, maybe they'll have to take Sam, too. They came from the same place, there's no real separation between them. If Dean melts back into him, Sam can make the demons see that.

While Dean is getting the lube, Sam takes the chance to push off his boxers. Dean returns, dropping the bottle by Sam's face on the pillow and stripping his own shirt off over his head before disposing of his shorts.

"Sam," Dean says as he stands at the side of the bed looking down. He takes a few seconds just to appreciate the view, and Sam would rush him if he weren't doing the same.

He starts with two fingers once he's gotten them slicked up. Sam's a little more relaxed now that he has at least the faintest idea of what it's going to feel like. For a few seconds there's resistance, but then Dean is knuckle deep inside of him, his fingers coming apart and then back together.

Sam tries to stifle his groan in his pillow, but Dean reaches up with the hand he isn't using to fuck Sam and pushes the barrier away. "Let me hear it, Sammy."

As if Sam could hold back. Dean has just touched something that makes him yell out so loud he feels cheap. "Dean, _Dean_!"

"Yeah," Dean grunts. Sam hears a slapping sound and manages to open his eyes once the pleasure has ebbed away enough. Dean's face is hovering above him, and Sam can see his other hand working away. Jerking himself off, slow and controlled so he doesn't come. Getting himself all wet with lube so he can fit into Sam and, if they're lucky, never find a way out.

"Gonna give you three," Dean says, leaning in. "Then I'm gonna give you everything."

"Skip," Sam pants. "Skip to the end."

"Might hurt, Sammy." Sam almost laughs in his face. As if Dean could hurt Sam any worse than he already has.

"Dean," he says, drawing the name out long enough to express all his annoyance and frustration and want. Dean decodes the message, pulls his hand back before the name has died on Sam's lips, and then the head of his dick is resting just outside of Sam.

Sam reaches down, wanting to be the one to steer Dean into him. He needs Dean to feel how much he wants to make this happen. Dean lets Sam do the work, closing his eyes once the head of his cock is inside and working his way forward slowly. Too slowly. Oh, there's a drag and an ache, just like Dean feared there would be, but Sam welcomes it, hopes it'll rend him in two.

This should not be how they say goodbye. This should not be the only time Sam ever gets Dean like this. Sam has known for months now, how could he wait this long?

Dean doesn't take it easy because it's Sam's first time. He's selfish, maybe for the first time in his life he can't stop himself from thrusting away exactly the way he wants to, and it's too little too late, but it's nice to see nonetheless. His brother's dick is thicker than Sam would have thought he could swallow, so he bites down on his hand to stop himself from whimpering. It's Dean, this is Dean, Sam can't make those sounds with Dean. He'll never hear the end of it, only he will, and much too soon.

"More," Sam begs. "More."

Dean fucks forward hard, grabs Sam's dick and starts to work his hand with no skill, because he can't focus on skill, because he feels too good and that's all thanks to Sam. But he twists at the head of Sam's dick, he lets his cock cram all the way into that place inside of Sam that makes him feel like he'll explode. Sam is a goner so much sooner than he wants to be.

Dean waits for Sam to finish coming, milks every last bit of him and then brings his filthy hand up, tangling it in Sam's hair for a devouring kiss. His other arm wraps around Sam, and his thrusts become less frantic. Shallow as his body sinks down so he can hold Sam close as he fucks him.

When Dean comes, he shouts Sam's name, and it echoes through the room for so long Sam thinks he's imagining it after a while. Or that Dean is repeating it, over and over. It's the last thing said between them that night. Dean pulls out and Sam rolls onto his side, and he is about to go to the bathroom to clean himself, but then he sees glowing numbers on the nightstand clock, bright red like hellfire.

36 hours and 33 minutes.

He's staying right here in bed with his brother shoved against his back.

The sun is bright when Sam drags the body out and lays it in the backseat of what will always be Dean's car. He's bleeding all over the upholstery; Sam hopes for a fleeting second that Dean will wake from the dead just to kill him for letting the car get fucked up.

Dean signed up for this. It's all he can think as he places this limp thing so broken it hardly resembles a body into the cheap shipping crate that will have to do because it's big enough and it's all they've got. They don't have time to make a real coffin, Bobby says, not after the drive. Not in the condition Dean is in. He tells Sam they need to get rid of Dean if they're gonna bury him and they'd better do it soon. But Sam refuses until they get to Pontiac, Illinois where two years ago, in a rare fit of drunken sentimentalism, Dean told Sam that it was the kind of place he could live in forever.

Bobby wants Sam to burn Dean, but Sam laughs in his face when he suggests it. Silently, he begs his brother to come back and haunt him. Give him grief about the shitty excuse for a burial he's getting or the car—especially the car. It was his dying wish that Sam take care of it and Sam is letting him bleed all over. Dean should come back for that.

She'd made Sam watch. This isn't a clean cut, knife through spine. Not that bad, that's what Dean had told Sam just before Sam had his first fleeting taste of death. This is that bad. The cuts are messy and unfinished and everywhere. Sam couldn't look away. She wouldn't let him. He had to stand there, pushed against a wall, useless as his brother got shredded.

He pats down the patch of dirt over the make-shift grave and realizes he doesn't even have a headstone for Dean. In a few years, when the grass reroots and covers up this spot, Sam won't even know where he's buried.

All he finds to remedy the situation is the nearby trees, so he strips bark off one and makes a cross. X marks the spot. He doesn't have the space to write much on it. He goes with brother. Not Dean's name or dates or who he belongs to. Brother. That's all Dean will need to remember the rest when he comes back and sees that Sam left this here so he would know who to look for.

Bobby walks up behind him, places a hand on his shoulder to pull Sam to his feet. It's not until then that Sam realizes he's covered in dirt, trying to dig back into the grave and pull Dean out. He'll never see him again. He'll never hold that body and all its terrifying deadweight again.

Sam had kissed him. Just after it happened, before Bobby came back into the house looking for him. Sam had pressed his mouth against Dean's and hoped it would be one of those times fairytales start to come true. It wasn't.

It's the first time that summer Sam tastes blood, but it's not the last.

For three days, Sam does not sleep. It's not easy staying awake that long, but Sam is too terrified. He thought the nightmares were bad before, when he had Dean's head to hide in and no idea just how unforgiving the stench of dead brother was going to be.

But he can't fight anymore and he slips into it without even realizing he's falling asleep.

He finds a dream. It's far away, somewhere deep down below, but Sam focuses. He reaches down and pulls it up toward him. He thinks he must be having his own weird dream, died and gone to Heaven, or has simply lost it once and for all. Sam would know the sight and smell and sound of Dean's dream anywhere. This is Dean's dream.

Sam doesn't pause to question it.

Dean is sitting in the grass by a river. The water is running gray and looks toxic. The world around them is empty, and Dean has a look so concentrated on his face that Sam almost doesn't want to distract him.

"Dean," he finally says, sitting directly in front of his brother.

Dean looks up from the water and watches him for a few blank seconds before recognition dawns on him. "Sam?"

"Yeah, Dean, it's me."

"That's what Sam looks like," he muses, more to himself than to Sam. "They keep telling me I'll forget. That I'll blame you. But look at you. I remember. You must have looked just like this."

"I do look like this," Sam assures him. "Are you real?"

"Are you?" Dean asks, staring up. "No, you can't be."

"I am. Dean, I promise I am."

Dean shakes his head. "Can't. You can't."

Sam reaches out and pulls him close and holds him for as long as his body will let him stay there.

"I don't want to forget you," Dean whispers.

Sam wakes up in a motel room alone; the owner is banging on the door and telling him he missed checkout.

Sam doesn't know if it's real or not. He almost doesn't care. Every night the dream is there. Every night Dean is sitting by the bank of that dirty river, which is the best he can do as far as building himself a happy dreamscape. Sam always fixes that. He makes the sun shine on his brother, turns the water so clear and cool Dean almost cries every time he dips his fingers into it.

He thanks Sam and he holds Sam and Sam holds him back. During the day, Sam's life is torture, but this happens every night and it makes things almost livable. Dean, every night. Like he never left. He makes fun of Sam's hair and tells Sam fart jokes and smiles sometimes, but only when he's looking right at Sam.

Sam knows it must not be real. How can you dream in Hell? How could Sam find the dream, even if Dean does somehow? But then, how could he not? Dean is his to find. He made sure of that, he tells Dean proudly of how he made sure to put that X down so he could always find him.

"What's it like?" Sam asks one night. He's peeling Dean's shirt off over his head and Dean touches his fingers to Sam's lips.

He leans down for a kiss. "Don't wanna talk about that," Dean says. "Don't wanna think about that. Just want to think about you."

"About you," Sam echoes, his arm curving around Dean's back and pulling him onto to the mattress.

He looks down at his brother, eyes scanning over the freckled, pale skin on his chest. It seems impossible that Dean could be here like this, so real and alive and beautiful, when just a month ago Sam stuffed him into a thin wooden box and tried not to wonder how so much blood could come out of one person.

"Hey," Dean whispers. "You with me?"

Sam nods, shaking the thoughts away. Dean is here and solid and that's all Sam can allow to matter. "Always."

Dean's smile thins then, as if he doesn't quite believe Sam, but he doesn't say anything.

"What?" Sam asks. "What's that look for?"

Dean shakes his head and pulls Sam in for what Sam is expecting to be a kiss that will lead to a fuck but it ends up being more of a hug. "You can come here as often as you want, Sammy," Dean whispers into his hair. "I want you to."

As if Sam was waiting for the invitation.

It's Sam's lifeline, his only lifeline. So he ignores when the dreamscape he comes into starts to get worse and worse every night. He ignores how distant Dean's eyes start to get, because he can still shake Dean and make him pay attention and see him there as if he were real. He just doesn't understand why Dean is ruining it.

"Why do you stay away so long?" Dean's voice is a challenge. He sounds mad at Sam, bitter and hateful. Like he's forgetting what he didn't want to forget and is blaming Sam like he'd sworn at first he wouldn't. Dean has been dead for almost three months. Sam hasn't gone one night without seeing him since those first four sleepless days.

"What do you mean?" Sam asks. "I come here every night."

Dean shakes his head. "You wait. Weeks and weeks. Why won't you come to me? Don't you miss me? Don't you care that I'm here and I need you to—?" Dean falls to his knees, crying loudly and, to Sam at least, inexplicably. He only just arrived; he doesn't know what he did. "You have to come, Sam. Or I'll do it."

"What?" Sam kneels down, sinks until he's on level with Dean and looks his brother in the eye. "Dean, I come as often as I can. My body won't let me sleep more than I do."

"Liar," he spits out at Sam.

"I'm not lying."

"Don't leave me down here alone with them. I'm gonna do it, Sammy. I'm gonna forget and I'm gonna be just like them when I do. I'm gonna do it soon. I can feel it. I want to do it."

"Want to do what?" Sam takes Dean's hand in his own. "Dean, I'm here with you as often as I can be."

"If you're alive, you must be older by now," Dean says, his fingers tracing Sam's jaw, a look on his face like he's trying very hard to understand something. "You don't look like this anymore. You can't still look like this."

"It's been three months," Sam says.

"You're not real. She killed Sam. I sold my soul and he still died, she killed him as soon as I was gone, she killed him. He's been dead for 30 years."

"No, she couldn't. Dean, she tried, but she couldn't."

"30 years. Where is he? Where are you?" Dean grabs Sam's shirt and shakes it. "Why don't you save me? You have to save me. Save me, Sammy, help me. Don't just sit there."

Sam doesn't answer that. Dean is right. Sam is supposed to save him and every day he tries finding a way and it's never any good.

"Dead," Dean mutters in response to Sam's silence. "Or doesn't care."

"Dean?" Sam asks, trying to reach out for his brother.

Dean pulls back. "Bet you have a family by now. Wife and kids. Bet they’ve never heard of me. And you come visit me every few weeks when you happen to remember, is that it?"

"No."

"Why do you even come if you won't save me?" Dean asks. He turns his face away. "I hope you're dead. I hope she killed you. Better than knowing I sold my soul for someone who won't even try to help."

"Why are you saying this?" Sam asks.

Dean looks at him coldly. "Because I hardly remember why I loved you."

Sam makes himself wake up before Dean can say anything else.

The next night, Sam goes back. He's dreading it, but he's dreading not seeing Dean more. He finds his brother sitting alone in pit full of bones and mangled bodies. His hands are red.

Sam makes the nightmarish setting disappear, replaces it with one of the rooms they invented when Dean was still alive and they used to dream together. But the blood stays.

He takes Dean's hands, trying to find the source. "Dean, what did they do to you? Where'd they hurt you?"

Dean laughs lifelessly. "Everywhere."

Sam frowns, feels the crease form in his forehead. He can't find the cut.

"I thought you would never come back," Dean says absently. "After those things I said to you. I wasn't ever expecting to see you again. I was so sorry. Sammy, I was sorry and I was never going to be able to tell you I didn't mean them."

"I told you," Sam says, looking up at Dean just long enough to catch his eyes, "I'm always going to come."

"Will you really?"

"Yes."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"I believe you." Dean's expression goes soft and he looks like he's in horrible pain as he says, "Don’t."

"You don't want to see me?" Sam asks, trying to keep the hurt out of his tone.

"Of course I do."

"Then why—?"

"It's not my blood," he says, yanking his hand back from Sam. "You won't find the cut, it's not my blood." He buries his bloody hands in his hair and pulls at it. "I don't want you to see me like this, Sammy. I want you to go and never come back."

There is literally nothing in the world Dean could have asked for that Sam wants to give him less. And he feels Dean the next night, knows he could slip in there. But Dean had seemed so desperate, completely genuine in his request. _I want you to go and never come back._ Sam never should have lived long enough to hear his brother say those words to him and mean them.

He resists. He stays in his own nightmare and wakes up after too few hours of sleep, too terrified to try again. The branches of the trees outside his room cast shadows across his bed, looking like the arms of some monster reaching out for him. He wishes it wasn't an illusion, but he lives to see the dawn and the morning and another sleepless night. And another. Even when he's not having nightmares, Dean won't come into Sam's dreams. Sam tries so hard to conjure him, but his dreamwalking abilities are weak from lack of practice and not nearly enough real rest. He tries so hard to dream that when he finally does he can hardly change setting, let along bring up the image of his brother.

After a week and a half of this, Sam gets so frail he can't even sense his brother's dream all the way down in Hell, couldn't disregard Dean's request and tap into it if he tried. He can't even stand on the outside and feel Dean's essence the pathetic way he has been doing since Dean showed up with bloody hands and ripped Sam's last goddamn support away from him.

He finds a crossroad, but it doesn't help him get where he's going. Dean is hogging Hell. It's like Dean is behind him every step he takes, dogging him, ruining every chance he finds for getting through this, only it's not like that at all because Dean is nowhere, not even in Sam's dreams.

And then Ruby finds him. Ruby, of all people, saves Sam when he's getting so close to driving Dean's car off a cliff out of spite. Ruby, who Dean had hated so much, is now the only person who pushes Sam's hair back from his face when he cries and whispers that it's okay and does all the things Dean is supposed to be doing. Dean would have hated it, but then Sam kind of really hates Dean right now.

She can help him, she tells him that first day, when she shows up wearing a body that should be rotting and dead unlike Dean's, which is, but which should be sitting across the room, laughing too loud at bad TV and making his presence impossible to ignore.

Sam kicks through the salt he put in the doorway, steps aside as she slips in past him.

"You can bring him back?" Sam asks.

"No, Sam. I'm sorry. If I knew how to do that, I would have already." Ruby looks genuinely sorry.

See, that's the thing about this. Sam knows deep down that she isn't, but she really looks like she is. Who is there to feel sorry for Sam? He can't talk to Bobby, who will say things like _moving on_ and _what Dean would have wanted_ that make Sam feel violent toward the old man, even though he's just trying to help. The car never answers back. Sam doesn't know how to take care of her like Dean did, and she doesn't forgive him for it, and Sam can't blame her because he's a piss poor substitute.

"Why are you wasting my time, then?" Sam asks, considering the knife in his duffel. She probably doesn't deserve to die, but Sam hasn't killed anything in a long time, and he imagines it would feel as satisfying as anything can right now, which isn't saying much.

"You're just going to give up on Lilith, then?" she asks incredulously. "After what she did to Dean, you're just going to let her walk away?"

She offers revenge. A vent for all the unfocused violent bursts of agony and hatred Sam feels in equal parts for Dean and himself and his dead parents for ever giving birth to him. But most of all for Lilith. She made him watch, and she'd laughed. It was a game for her. Sam can still taste his brother's blood in his mouth. The only thing that could ever make him laugh again would be doing it in her face as he watches the light flicker out of her.

"How?"

Ruby told him, and Sam had thought she was joking at first. He'd said get out and never come back, like Dean had told him, because if Dean ever saw Sam doing what she tells him he has to do, he would swear he never had a brother at all.

Sam is left alone again. No dreams, no brother, no demon with bad ideas that lead to good results.

By the time she finds him again, five days later, he's so drunk he almost has to crawl back to his room. She catches him and holds him up, so much stronger than her slight body should be. Strong like Dean was on the rare nights it was him holding Sam up and not the other way around, though she doesn't laugh at Sam for being drunk or complain that he's too heavy for this shit.

He fucks her that night. The deeper into her he goes, the darker everything around him feels, and Sam knows this is it. This is the closest to Hell he's going to get, so he takes it greedily. He fucks her hard, so hard he's probably tearing the body in two, but then it's not hurting Ruby and if it were Sam wouldn't care. They tangle up, two animated corpses, and afterward Ruby slices into herself and Sam puts his mouth on it like she tells him to, and she pushes his hair away from his face as he drinks and tells him it's okay. Then Sam passes out.

It's not like most nights after alcohol. Sam doesn't wake in fits and starts hoping to find his brother with a glass of water and an aspirin. He sleeps through the night. In his dream, he thinks that he would like to see his brother and within seconds Dean is there. Sam knows it's different from being in Dean's dream. This is an imitation, like the version of Sam Dean used to rely on before Sam discovered his dreams. But it looks like Dean, sounds like Dean, smells and tastes, to Sam's unconscious mind, like Dean.

He wakes up feeling strong and well-rested and like he can carry himself to the end of the day, especially since he knows once he collapses into bed at night his brother will be there. Ruby is there the next morning, ready to teach him. She gives him a purpose, but it's the blood he really wants. The blood gives him his dreams. The blood gives him his brother. Addiction comes easily.

As the nights go on, Sam's dreamwalking gets stronger. Stronger than he ever was, even before Dean went to Hell, when Sam had been practicing so hard. The more he drinks, the better he dreams, until finally, after a week and a half of being with Ruby, he finds his brother's dream again.

He doesn't go in; even in his current state he can't betray his brother like that. And as ridiculous as it is, Sam feels like Dean will know just by looking at him how he got there. How he got so big and strong. Dean didn't want Sam to see him—Sam gets that now. But that doesn't mean he can't benefit from having found the dream again. He dips his fingers in, like he had that first night, lets his hand feel submerged in Dean. Breathes in the residue of the dream as it lingers there in front of him.

"Hey." Sam is being shaken awake. Like every morning, he hopes it's Dean, and like every morning he wants to break the neck of the black-eyed girl holding him just because it isn't.

"Fuck off," Sam mutters, trying to go back to sleep. He'd been with Dean. Dean was going to kiss him. What the fuck did she think she was doing pulling him out of that?

"Sam, the morning's almost gone. The demon we're tracking will have left town by the time we get going at this rate."

Sam ignores her, grabs the knife on the nightstand and brings it to her arm.

"You just drank before bed," she says. "I mean, it's good that you've got a healthy appetite, but maybe you should slow down."

Sam sits up, bringing the knife to her neck. "You don't tell me what to do," he says, gripping her arm hard enough to bruise and lifting it. "You let me have it, or I'll slit your goddamn throat."

Ruby swallows hard, the knife slices her where the blade is grazing her skin. Not deep, but deep enough to bleed. Sam sics on it like a hellhound. 

When he finishes he gets up to piss and washes his face clean before he looks in the mirror. Ruby has gotten out of bed and is starting to dress, but Sam heads right back for the mattress anyway.

"What are you doing?" She asks, eyes clicking over to black.

Sam shrugs. "Going back to sleep."

"Sam, we have work to do."

"Do it yourself," he says, rolling over and pulling a pillow over his eyes and ears.

"I can't, it has to be you," Ruby replies in that creepily reverent voice she gets sometimes. A chill passes through Sam, and he wishes she would just leave now that she's served her purpose. "I thought you wanted revenge."

That's true enough. He had. Before the blood gave him his dreams back.

"Revenge isn't going to give me Dean."

"Neither is this," Ruby snaps. "This is pathetic, you're just hiding. Pretending. He's not real, you know he's not real. Lilith is real."

Real is his brother in Hell, not wanting to see him. Sam doesn't really feel like siding with real.

"Go away. Let me sleep. I'll practice exorcizing more when I wake up."

Sam feels the bed dip and then her arms are on him, flinging the pillow away from his face and shaking him roughly by the shoulders. "You're focusing on the wrong thing! This isn't going to get you what you want."

Sam shoves her arms away. "You know what I want? I want to sleep until I starve to death. And if you would quit waking me up, that's exactly what I would fucking do."

Sam sees from the fear that dims Ruby's eyes that he really could do that. The blood helps him sleep longer. Maybe if he drank enough, he could just never wake up. Stay true to his threat. He could drink everything she has in her veins and do the world two favors in one painless move. One less demon bitch in the population, and one less of whatever Sam is at this point. Lower than a demon. It would be a kindness all around.

"You can sleep," she finally says, her voice strained. "We'll talk about this when you wake up."

If, Sam thinks, hopeful for the first time in almost four months.

Ruby leaves him that night. She says she's teaching him a lesson, that she'll come back when he remembers how to stay focused on the goal, which is, of course, killing Lilith. She takes pity on him, though. She leaves his lips bubbling over, warm with the taste of metal and smoke. Sam's whole body is thrumming with power when he drifts off to sleep that night.

He dreams of Dean. Like every night. He dreams of Dean, though Dean looks at him dark and disappointed, because even in his dream, Sam can't quite scrub the taste out of his mouth. It's all over his face, and when he tries to wipe it away, he spits up blood.

Dean takes pity then, lowers to his knees and pats Sam's back until it's all lying in a puddle on the floor and Sam feels like he's just regurgitated his organs. Dean says it's alright as he eases Sam through it, and once Sam is good and empty and clean again, Dean lets Sam kiss him.

He holds his brother that night. He grabs onto to him and holds him so tight and he doesn't let go.

He wakes up the next morning alone in his bed, but clutched in his fingers, so tight they've grown numb from holding on, Sam feels the leather of the jacket he keeps buried in the trunk of the Impala where he won't have to see it and be reminded of how many people he's lost who used to love the damn thing.

It's warm, as if someone has been wearing it recently. Dean was wearing it in that dream. It smells like leather of course, and whiskey, but underneath is that scent, unforgettable even after four months. Long after it's faded from everything Dean left behind _including_ this jacket. It smells like Sam's brother. He holds it to his face and cries into it and spends the day unable to get out of bed. He's too weak, his legs shake from a need for blood. He doesn't know if it's Dean he's craving, closeness to his own uncontaminated blood, or Ruby's, which only makes the taint worse, but which also makes the distance between him and Dean almost marginal, at least while he's asleep.

He can't sleep that night, the withdrawal is too much. He lies awake tossing and trembling and wishing someone could see or hear him and take some goddamn pity. Lilith, for example. She's supposed to be coming for him, trying so hard to kill him. She's supposed to be strong and intimidating. What the hell is taking her so long?

At five in the morning, when the sky is pink and the sun is hardly out, Sam stumbles out to the car. Even the small amount of light is blinding to him, and he holds his hands up to try and block it. Someone packing a car across the parking lot says something to his wife about the crazy drunk and being careful, but Sam ignores them. He has to check something, and he doesn't care what he looks like to other people if what he's suspecting turns out to be true.

Under the weapons, Dean's duffel and the empty space where Sam's would be if it wasn't in the motel room sit exactly how Sam left them. Sam leans forward, reaching past them to the back of the trunk. He fumbles blindly around, looking for the feel of leather where he _knows_ he left it.

It's not there. It's not there. It's inside in Sam's bed, which is impossible unless he sleepwalked, and he highly doubts that seeing as how he can hardly hold himself up conscious.

He makes it back inside and calls Ruby and tells her he's ready to do things on her terms. She shows up just a few minutes later, smiling in a tender way that's full of shit, but Sam pretends not to know. He drinks from her, taking what she offers, and wonders if he'll have to suck her dry the day he uses her blood to save his brother.

Sam is a good little soldier after that. He drinks his blood. He exorcises his demons. He works on hurting them enough to get information. Ruby says it won't be long until he can kill. He pretends that this excites him. He says a lot about hunting Lilith, and it's not that he doesn't mean it, it's just that he doesn’t plan to bring her along for the ride when he and Dean get around to it.

Behind her back—no better than that. Right next to her, when she's lying in bed with her cold, dead body and that ashy scent that makes Sam sick and strong at the same time, he practices. He pulls an apple off a tree and wakes up with it in his hand. He grabs a vase of flowers off a kitchen table and wakes up with roses in his face and water spilled onto the sheets. He steals candy from a baby and offers it to Ruby the next day, claiming he found it in his bag and isn't hungry.

She's suspicious. At first she jokes about the things he's taking to bed with him, but as the objects grow more and more unlikely she starts to give him looks. It doesn't matter. She doesn't know what he's up to, so she sticks around to find out, and that's all Sam needs her for. A link to the blood.

The woman in the room next to theirs has a poodle named Bauble. Bauble runs to Sam's arms when he calls her and the next morning, Sam knocks on the old lady's door and asks if she knows who the dog belongs to. She exclaims and wonders at how Bauble could have gotten there, she left her at home in Florida. Sam flinches at the mention of the state, mumbles something about how it must have followed her there, and walks off while she's still in the middle of expressing her shock with a smile curving the edges of his mouth.

The Dean he dreams about isn't real; no blood high has ever let him forget that. That's why all he gets when he clings so desperately to that mirage is his shirts and shoes and that jacket. But he knows where to find Dean.

He pulled a living thing out of a stranger's head. A living thing from miles and miles away—Sam is nowhere near Florida, he makes sure of that. If he can do that, Sam tells himself, there's no reason he can't waltz into Dean's head and pull his brother out of Hell. Hell and Florida probably have a lot in common, anyway. It's too damn hot, and Dean was never a fan of hot weather.

Sure, Dean told Sam not to walk in his dreams anymore, but he also told Sam to save him. And it doesn't matter. Dean doesn’t get a monopoly on rescuing people without their consent. He's going into that goddamn dream and he's not leaving until he's got his asshole big brother with him.

He drinks and drinks the next day under the guise of preparing to try and kill demons for the first time, and Ruby tells him he probably won’t be able to, but she lets him have his fill anyway. She likes the enthusiasm. He's never had this much at once, feels like his body will explode with all the power, so it's not hard to convince Ruby that the drinking binge is backfiring. He feels sick, he tells her, and he just needs to sleep it off. He knows if he tries saving Dean that night after fighting demons all day he might not have enough juice left, and he's not risking what might be his only chance.

Annoyed, Ruby gives in. Sam falls asleep and finds his brother's dream just where it always is.

He steps in and hears screaming immediately, and his heart freezes up. For a moment he considers fleeing, the sound is too intense, too painful. His brother should never have to cry out like that. He walks forward, though, toward the cries, and realizes long before he sees what's going on that it's not his brother's voice begging for mercy, though the laughing—the hysterical, unbridled, terrifying laughter—that might be Dean.

The image Sam sees when he finally finds his brother is enough to haunt him for a few thousand years at least. Dean is standing in front of a rack, some _thing_ is strapped to it with a face so horrifying even Sam, after his lifetime of monsters, can't look at it. But Dean's face is even worse. He cuts into the creature with dirty, sharp objects, spilling out smoke and blood that makes Sam's stomach rumble, and as the monster pleads with him to stop, Dean smiles the way he used to only smile at Sam.

"Dean," Sam says, his voice breaking.

The cheerful expression falls away as Dean turns toward him. The object he'd been using to torture what Sam assumes must be a demon's real form slips from Dean's fingers and clatters on the floor loudly. It echoes around them. Sam stares down at it, not even sure what the thing is, and then looks back up at Dean. His brother's lip is trembling.

"Sammy?"

The demon coughs up some blood and then finds enough strength to start laughing. "How sweet," it says. "Does somebody have a guilty conscious?"

Dean doesn't acknowledge it; he keeps his eyes locked on Sam's. "Sam."

Sam nods, walking forward. "It's me, Dean. I'm here."

"Why?" he asks. "Why?"

Sam lifts his hand, brushes it along the edge of his brother's jaw. "It's okay, Dean. I'm here to rescue you."

"Your brother?" the demon says with a snort. "There's no saving him. Not after what he's done."

There is. There will be. Sam is doing it right now. He thinks of turning on the creature, torturing it the way Ruby's taught him to for turning his brother into whatever he's turned into. But he can't waste the blood, he's got more important things to use it on.

He grabs his brother. He grabs Dean and focuses like he's never focused on anything, gives his entire mind to this. Around them the dreamscape starts shaking like an earthquake, and the monster on the rack starts yelling something about how this isn't allowed. Dean is his. He can't be saved now.

Dean is Sam's. Why no one understands that, Sam will never know, but he's marking his territory once and for all.

Sam works his way up, fighting through the fog of sleep. He needs to wake up, and he needs to do it before this vortex sucks his brother back down into Hell like it's trying so hard to do.

"Let go, Sam Winchester."

Sam pauses in his assent, taken off guard by this new sound. It's a voice like gravel and thunder and death. Almost singing, but the song strikes him with shame and self-loathing and doubt. He can't save Dean, he can't even save himself. He shakes his head, because he shouldn’t be thinking that, not now.

"I must rescue Dean Winchester from perdition," it says. "It is my task and only I can accomplish it. I have been preparing for thousands of years, and you will alert them to our plans if you do not release him now."

Sam sees a white light in front of him, so bright and hot it burns him down to his bones. He wants to shield himself from it with his hand, but he needs that hand to hold Dean and, anyway, it won’t help in the face of this much power. Sam's flesh would be translucent held up to this light.

He's sure he's dying; this will kill him. His skin is evaporating, his bones are turning to ash. He wants to listen. The first pure thought he's had in years runs through his mind, feeling clean and right. You must let go, it says.

"What are you?" Sam asks. "Who are you? And what do you want with my brother?"

"I am Castiel," it answers. "I am an angel of the lord. I want to save your brother."

Distantly, he hears a scream. The scream is Ruby's, and she's telling Sam to stop, let go, do what this monster is telling him. It'll kill them both, she says. Wake up and let go, make it leave.

A thousand years, it tells him again. This has been his purpose for a thousand years. So why, Sam wants to know, has it taken four months? Why did his brother burn so long? Why did he have to burn at all?

"Sorry, Castiel," he says. "He's mine and I'm saving him."

There's another shriek and the sound of wings flapping. Sam curls his fingers tighter around Dean's arm. He can't let go. He can't lose Dean. It's all he knows, all he can think. Don't let go of Dean.

And then Sam wakes up drenched in sweat.

He leans over the side of the bed and vomits. Someone strokes his back. He can hear ragged breathing. He turns to find his brother's face watching him worriedly.

"It's working," Sam mutters, grabbing the arm that's trying to sooth him. Logically, Sam knows this must be Ruby in bed with him, but he's so high it looks just like Dean. "It's working. Give me more, give me more before it wears off."

"More what?" the illusion asks.

Sam brings the wrist in his hand up to his lips. He's got no knife on him and no time to find one. He needs to keep this image here. He doesn't care if he has to bite through her skin like an animal.

But the sweat he tastes when he puts his mouth on the flesh is salty, not sulfur. It burns Sam's mouth like hot sauce because he's so close to demon right now he can't even swallow salt. But it's Dean. It tastes like Dean. The bite turns to a kiss, and Sam holds his mouth there, the skin of his face burning from the tears running down it.

"Dean," he says. "Dean, be real. Be real, please. Please."

"What is this?" Dean asks. Sam can't see his face, he's too busy kissing skin. He can't kiss Dean's mouth, because Dean will taste what a monster he's turned into, but he can have this. "Am I still dreaming?"

There's one thing Sam knows better than anything at this point, and that's the difference between asleep and awake. The Dean next to him he's not sure about. That dream he went into, the confrontation with that bright white light, that felt real, but there's no knowing. But Sam knows he's awake now.

"It's not a dream," Sam tells him. He's got no strength to explain. He's shaking, his body feels drained of all life. Withdrawal is edging over him and taking hold faster than it ever has before. He emptied himself saving Dean. "Be here when I wake up," Sam pleads.

And then everything goes dark.

Sam's brother—or whatever he pulled from that dream, some monster shaped just like his brother—is hunched on the floor, over a body. Ruby's body. She looks dead, her eyes replaced by deep black holes and more blood. Dean has torn into her stomach and is now eating his way through her corpse. It makes Sam's stomach turn, both in disgust and in envy. He needs a drink. His skin is coated in sweat and he's shaking so hard the bed is rocking. It's been so long since he tasted blood.

"Let me have some," he says, voice weak. So weak he can hardly hear himself over the chewing.

Dean hardly looks up, the bottom of his face now covered in drying blood. Sam has turned away from so many mirrors since he let Ruby talk him into drinking blood, ashamed at the thought of what his brother would say. Seeing Dean's face like this makes him wonder if he accidentally trapped himself in Hell instead of pulling Dean out.

"Please," he tries again. "So thirsty."

"Sammy?" he hears. The monster sounds just like his brother. It sounds worried and warm and Sam doesn’t care if it wants to eat Ruby as long as it'll stay around and sound like that. "Sam, are you awake?"

The thing lets go of Ruby and stands up, rushing to Sam's side. Sam blinks and blinks again, because suddenly his brother's face is clean of blood and the body on the floor is whole, except for her burnt eyes. Dean's fingers are still covered in blood, but Sam sees now that he's been wrapping the body, checking for pulse. That blood is Ruby's though, and Sam tries to reach out for his brother's hand to suck it clean off his fingers. Oh god, he can smell it. He can smell how strong it would make him feel.

Dean misinterprets what he wants. He wipes the blood off before giving Sam his hand. "Sam?"

"Don't take her," Sam murmurs. "I need her. Please, I'm dying without it."

"Without what?" Dean sits by Sam on the bed. "Who is she? Sam, I don’t know what's going on."

"Did I save you?" he asks, squeezing his fingers around the hand Dean gave him, checking to see if his brother is really solid. He is. "I did. I saved you."

"Is this real?" Dean asks, his eyes looking wide and terrified. "Don't let it be a trick."

"'s not a trick," Sam murmurs. "I had to so I saved you. I think I'm going to die now, okay?"

"No," Dean says, tugging Sam's hand desperately. "That's not okay."

Sam's eyes are so heavy.

He's plastered to the wall. The room is empty—no Dean, no Ruby. Sam is alone. Again. Alone. Like he'll always be. He was crazy to think he could save Dean. He…he's crazy. And he's being pressed to the wall by a demon he can't even see.

The demon is inside of him; he can't control it.

"Scared," he says, but there's no one to hear it except for his own voice laughing in his head.

He's thrown across the room, hits another wall just in time to hear the door open and see a rush of light from the sun. It makes him cower—he hasn't seen so much light in what feels like a lifetime, and his eyes burn as if he's looking directly into the angel that came for his brother.

Maybe he is. A voice in the back of Sam's mind whispers that he is an abomination. Sam already knew this. He's pinning himself to a fucking wall for crying out loud. He doesn’t appreciate the reminder.

"Jesus fucking—Sam!"

Sam's body gets another kick across the room at the sound of Dean's voice, and then he starts to slide up. Up. Up to the ceiling. Just like mom and Jess and he can't make Dean watch this happen again.

He can't see his brother, can't even focus on the string of exclamation and curses as Dean throws furniture around, looking for the demon attacking Sam.

It's me, Sam wants to tell him, but the blood won't let him talk.

He drops to the floor. Lights out.

It's minutes or hours or days before Sam is aware of his surroundings again. He sits up, the room almost familiar to him, and looks around at the motel room walls. They were off-white, starting to yellow from age, when he fell asleep, but now they have a fresh coat of blood-red paint. It looks like everything Sam drank before he went to bed has been drenched into the cheap wallpaper.

Ruby is standing nearby watching him with a nasty smirk. Sam stares at her until she morphs into Dean and the smirk turns down into a concerned frown. He doesn’t know which one of them it really is, if either. They could both be mirages, but he likes this one better.

"Thirsty," Sam whines. If his blood would stop buzzing, if the need weren't so insistent, he would think of something to say to his brother that makes sense or matters. "Please, tell her to come back. I'll do anything she asks if she comes back."

"She's dead, Sam. I don't know what happened. But whoever she is, I…she was too far gone to talk by the time we woke up. She died."

Sam whimpers. She's no good to him dead. 

"I'm sorry," Dean says again, shaking his head. "Who was she?"

"It doesn't matter," Sam mutters. "Because I saved you."

Dean nods, though his face does not say thank you the way Sam would like it to. "What did you do, Sam? What the hell did you do? Who was that woman?"

"I can’t tell you," Sam replies. He puts his hands over his eyes. "I can't, you'll hate me."

Sam had forgotten until the moment he woke up and Dean was alive that all his brother had asked was for him not to trust Ruby, not to use those powers. Sam will assume 'don't become a demon blood fiend' was implied.

"Did you sell your soul?" Dean grabs Sam by the collar and shakes him, forgetting all his worry. "Sam, tell me you didn't."

"I didn't," Sam answers weakly. "No one wanted me. I tried and I tried, but they didn't want me."

Sam looks over at Dean, reaches up and tries to loosen the grip into something softer. Something more in line with the tender touches he's missed so much for four months, the Dean he poisoned his blood to save. "Dean, I thought I couldn't save you. I gave up, but I did it. I did it."

"How?" Dean asks again. "You gotta tell me what you did."

Sam shakes his head. "You won't ever forgive me."

"The woman," he says. "Her eyes were burnt out. There was blood running down her cheeks. She was dying."

"Dead," Sam mutters. "She's been dead for months."

Dean's contradiction is heated and icy at the same time. "No, she died right in front of me—what did you do to her?"

Sam's eyebrows draw together and he sifts through his slipshod brain for a name. "Castiel," he finally supplies. "Castiel killed her."

"Castiel?" Dean asks.

"The—the thing. The light thing." Sam hesitates before continuing. He sounds almost as crazy as he is. "The angel. I heard her screaming that he was going to kill us. Looking at him was—but I'm not dead. You aren't, either."

"No," Dean replies. "I'm…"

"Alive. I saved you." Sam holds onto him just a little bit harder. "He came for you, Dean. But you were mine. I had to tell him. I couldn't let him do it because he might have done it wrong and I didn't. I saved you."

"Shh, Sammy." Sam knows Dean is trying to calm him down so he can answer straight, but he struggles against his brother's outstretched hand. He doesn't want to answer straight. He can't. He _can’t_. "Shh, I know. But I need you to tell me how."

"The body, Dean. Tell me it's gone."

"Yeah. I salted and burned her while you were out of it. Then I came home and you were—" Dean cuts himself off, but his eyes dodge up to the ceiling. Sam can see the primal terror in Dean's expression just from the memory.

"Gone," Sam says, both relieved and horrified. He can't drink now. "Ruby's gone."

"Ruby?" Dean says, his voice going dark. "You telling me that was her?"

Sam nods.

"What did you do?" he asks again. This time, his face is unfeeling and his words chill Sam all the way down to the sulfur in his blood. "Tell me." 

Sam recognizes the threat in the words and all his hope and happiness and the last pathetic pieces of him that wanted to live curl up inside of him, dead as the brother he tried to save. This is not Dean. This is not what he wanted. This is the thing Sam got a snapshot of in the dream he pulled it out of, the shadow of his brother who laughed as he cut some demon's guts out.

 _What did I bring back?_ Sam asks himself, remembering the monster as he ate Ruby and wondering if that wasn't a hallucination after all.

"You've been working with her? You worked with her to bring me back?" Dean's face contorts in anger. "With that black-eyed bitch after everything?"

"Dean, she—"

"She wanted me there, you idiot. If she hadn't I never would have been in Hell." Dean pulls his arm back, and for one confused second, Sam thinks his brother is about to strike him. He punches the mattress instead, but it doesn’t matter. The look he gives Sam hurts more than any hit could have. "They're all the same, and they're so much worse than we thought and you—you've been up here helping them. While I was burning. You were helping them."

"Not them," Sam says, trying to defend himself, but he knows how weak it will sound, and he can't hold up against the glare Dean is giving him. It reminds Sam of the way he looked in the dream the night he accused Sam of not caring or trying to help. The night before he told Sam not to come back. But Sam saved him. He cared, he helped. He saved Dean, that's supposed to be what Dean wanted. "Dean, she wanted to help me. She was the only person who could help me."

"Sam." Dean's voice trembles, and it's not understanding or calm or warm. It doesn't make Sam feel any better. His voice is scared—terrified—with an edge of…angry. Impatient. Dean is supposed to be happy and safe now because Sam saved him, and now it's Sam's turn to be screwed. "Tell me what you did. Tell me why you were sick."

"I was sick?" Sam asks, though he remembers. He wants to distract his brother. Maybe remind Dean that he was worried. It's playing dirty, but it's a game Sam's been good at since he was six months old.

It works. For half a minute it works. Dean leans forward to brush his hand on Sam's face again and his eyes widen just a bit. "You've spent the last five days in a fit. You kept babbling that you needed it, and to feed it to you, but you didn't say what it was. You didn't let me help you."

"It was withdrawal," he finally admits, scrubbing a hand over his face. He almost doesn't even care about disappointing Dean right now, not through his own disappointment. So he tells the truth, which he had been planning never to do. "I would have drank her, even dead. I would have taken every drop."

"Every drop of wh—?" Dean grabs Sam, and Sam winces.

"Blood," he answers quickly. "Blood, Dean, that's how I saved you. I let her turn me into—I don't even know what. An addict, a demon. I'm still craving it. Don't hit me. Please don't hurt me, Dean. It's what I had to do. It saved you."

"Demon blood?" Dean asks, his face pales considerably and he shoves Sam away as he begins to rise to his feet. "You've been—"

"Drinking it, yes." Sam swallows and looks down. "Is that what you wanted? The truth?"

Sam hears Dean drop heavily back into the chair. "No," he replies faintly, and Sam looks up, finding a defeated look on his brother's face that is entirely new. Even in Hell, Dean had more fight than this. His eyes look more lifeless than they did when Sam had buried him. "But that's all I can do now. Force people to tell the truth. I never wanted that."

Sam feels for him. Even after the terror this Dean struck into him. Now that he gets a good look, he sees his big brother under all the fear and hatred and anger and loss. Sam's own fear dissolves until all he feels is pity, concern, and the love that made him fall so low.

"I still love you," Sam whispers dimly. He can feel the room shaking as the need for blood begins to overwhelm him again. "I don't care if you're a monster now."

Dean looks away from him, and Sam doesn't know if he's trying to hide from Sam because of shame or disgust.

It doesn't matter for long. Sam's mind can't fight the withdrawal.

"I need to brush my teeth," Sam says.

As soon as the words are out, Sam feels the back of someone's fingers checking his forehead for fever. There's a cool, wet cloth wiping sweat off his face. He feels…he smells…

"Sammy?" He hears his brother.

Sam opens his eyes slowly and sees Dean waiting by his bed. The room is a disaster area. Half the furniture is broken and the rest is overturned, except for the chair Dean is sitting on. Dean is sitting in Sam's motel room and Sam is awake.

His brother's eyes are as black as pitch. Sam's been there. He tries to sit up, tries to reach out and reassure Dean. It's okay if he's a demon now. They both are. They can still have each other.

"Please be okay this time," Dean says. No trace of anger or hate or anything scary. It's his stupidly perfect big brother this time.

Sam watches as the black in his brother's eyes fades back into green. "I really saved you." He's heavy with disappointment that he knows he shouldn't be feeling. He got Dean back. Not a demon, Dean is saved all the way through. It was okay that Sam turned himself for a moment. It was okay when Dean was just as damned as he was. 

He shoves the too-hot covers off his legs and tries to stand up. "I need to brush my teeth," he says again.

"Yeah, it smells like shit in there," Dean replies, putting his palm flat against Sam's chest and pushing him back down into the bed. "But would you take it easy? You've been out of it for days, you might not be okay to walk yet."

Sam shakes his head. There's blood in his mouth, God knows how many days old. "I can walk," he says, pushing Dean's hand away.

He trips onto the floor. Dean half-laughs as he swoops down and pulls Sam to his feet. "Come on, I'll take you to the bathroom if it matters so much."

Sam brushes his teeth and pisses and splashes cold water on his face. He's drawn, yellow-skinned from so many months sleeping through the day, and he smells like a carcass. Dean, though. Dean looks beautiful hanging behind his reflection in the mirror.

Sam stares at his brother in the glass for a long, long minute, and waits for it all to flood in and hit him. He did it. This is real. That is actually Dean and Dean is actually alive. Nothing comes. Sam doesn't believe it. He feels numb, like he's drowning in the same emptiness that has hollowed him out since Dean took all the better parts of him down to Hell where they belonged. He feels nothing but the absence of the blood he needs to stay alive.

"You ready to talk yet?" Dean asks, his fingers curling on Sam's shoulder.

Turning, Sam puts his hands on Dean's face, trying to reassure himself with the touch. Dean's skin has traces of salt, and Sam flinches from the contact. He shakes his head, pointing back into the room. "Too weak," he says, which is somewhat of a lie. "Help me get back to bed."

Dean sighs but he obeys, helping Sam onto the side of the mattress he has not already made a mess of. Dean stacks pillows against the headboard so Sam can prop himself up and then sits at the foot of the bed, his hands on Sam's feet.

"Don't hate me," Sam begs, meeting his brother's eyes and taking his hands between his own. "Dean, don't hate me. You can’t hate me."

"Of course I don't," he replies. "But, Jesus, Sam. Demon blood?"

"I had to. I didn't know what else to do. It made me strong, and I had to be to save—"

"You shouldn't have saved me," Dean replies, but the force has all gone out of his voice. "Not like that."

"It wasn't just…" Sam looks down and fidgets his hands, unsure if he should let go of Dean or hold on tight enough to keep him from lashing out. "I started doing it before I knew it could save you."

Dean's expression dims even more, but instead of pulling away, he just stares blankly at their tangled hands. "That's the kind of thing we were raised to kill people for."

"I understand." Sam manages to force his voice not to break as he says it. "You can kill me. Just don't hate me."

Dean's head snaps up sharply and Sam sees his eyes, wide and wet like an injured animal's. "You think I would do that? Is that what you—it is, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"Sammy." Dean brings his hands up to cover his mouth. He stares at Sam—stares as if he's only just really realized who Sam is. "Oh god, Sam."

Sam frowns at how broken Dean's expression is now that he's fully aware of his surroundings. He pulled Dean right out of Hell and somehow he's already made him miserable. They couldn't have a day first, or even five minutes to celebrate. There will never be five minutes for Sam and Dean.

"Dean, I'm sorry. I know it was wrong. I know I should be punished. But I didn't know what else to do. I just wanted an escape."

"Don't." Dean pushes Sam's hair out of his face. "Sam, I don't want to know what I did to you. I'm sorry, but I don't want to know."

Sam nods. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's…" Dean swallows and Sam can see that it takes an effort to continue. "It's okay. We'll get you better. That's—we can still save you. You're going to be okay."

"We both will," Sam tries. Because he saved Dean and more than anything—more than Sam getting Dean back—that was supposed to mean Dean would be okay.

Dean meets Sam's eyes for less than a second before he averts them. "You know that isn't true. You just made it clear that you know. I'll never really be saved."

"Of course…" Sam tightens his hold on Dean's hands and turns his face, kissing them. "Of course you will. The angels wanted to do it, because you should be in Heaven, but I needed you here with me. I couldn't let them have you."

"No angel wanted me."

"I saw him," Sam says. "I felt him."

"Couldn't have been. I saw it, too, but it couldn't—how could you still want me?"

Sam's mouth drops open, because Dean hating him he expected to have to fight against, but that question he did not see coming. "My brother."

"Not your brother anymore." Dean pauses, his eyes scanning Sam's for a few moments. "This wasn't all you saw, was it? I could see it on your face, Sam. The last time you woke up when—I was confused and I was angry but you—you knew what to be scared of." He pulls his hands away. "Those dreams I had, about you visiting me in Hell. Were those real?" He brushes his hands through his hair and laughs dully. "That's crazy, right? They felt real. You were so real. But that's crazy."

"They were real," Sam admits. "I've been doing it for a long time, Dean. Before you went to Hell."

Dean makes a noise of sheer agony, and Sam thinks that's it. He lied for so long, and he invaded Dean's thoughts, and he knew how wrong it was. Dean is right to hate him. But it’s not hate Sam sees when his brother's eyes lock on his own, at least not hate for Sam.

"You were supposed to leave me there. You were supposed to leave me." He shakes his head. "God, you could have left me. You weren't ever supposed to go there."

"They didn't hurt me," Sam assures him. "I didn't go to Hell, just your drea—"

"You saw what I was doing. In my dream, to Alastair. You saw how I loved it. Sam, you weren't supposed to see that ever. Anyone else, but not you."

"A demon," Sam says. "I was fucking one. I was turning into one. How could I care that you were hurting one?"

"It was a demon in the dream. It was people in Hell. Souls, like me. I did those things to them, and I loved it." Dean's hands curl into fists. "It's not safe to have me up here. I just showed you that—I threatened you. Even you. You should have saved someone else."

"But I didn't want someone else." Sam tries to smooth Dean's hands out, but Dean struggles against him. By the time Sam finally wins, Dean is crying.

"How do you think people become demons, Sam?" he asks. "Because it's not by sucking blood."

Sam grabs Dean and guides him forward, making room for him on the bed. Dean lets Sam kiss his face, but he doesn't return it. He just lies there placidly, staring forward.

"I'm the real monster," he says distantly. "What I did—you only hurt yourself drinking blood. But you brought me here. Now it's on you. You should put a knife through me, Sammy. Before I do something awful." 

Sam chokes on a laugh, and Dean looks up sharply, as surprised to hear the sound as Sam is to have made it. "God, of all the people to ask for that. After all the shit you gave me."

 _That isn't why I saved you,_ Sam thinks. _You're going to live whether you like it or not._

"It was different," Dean insists. "You hadn't done anything wrong. I ha—"

"Emphasis on the past tense, Dean. I've done plenty wrong since." Sam swallows. "So do I deserve to die, then? Is that how we're gonna end this? You take me out, I'll take you out?"

"I won't," Dean says. "Not because of some demon blood. Not for anything. I couldn't ever do that."

"I know. I remember." Sam gives Dean a weak smile and strokes three fingers on his cheek. "But neither will I."

"You should hate me after what you saw."

"Maybe," Sam admits. "But I don't. I don't care how much you deserve it. I don't care if it makes me worse than I already am. I am never going to hate you. I am never going to kill you. You're forgiven. Whatever you did in Hell, it doesn't count. I'm not counting it."

"How can you make it sound so easy?"

"Demon blood," Sam reminds him. "No room for judgment here."

Dean takes a deep breath and then launches into what he seems to think is going to be a long, long explanation. "I'm practically a demon. I was well on my way—" 

Sam cuts him off. He doesn't really need or want to hear it. "So was I. So what? We're both monsters." He shrugs. "At least we're monsters together?"

Dean doesn't look the least bit convinced, so Sam sighs. "Dean, you made me live. I never asked for that, but you forced it on me. And I can't be good without you, I tried. Maybe that goes both ways. Maybe we can save each other. But if not—if not, neither of us is going back down there alone."

Sam knows if anyone will keep him in line, it's his dick of a big brother. That's all he ever had or needed, and it was the absence of it that made him falter.

Of course, there's no way to say that to Dean. No grabbing him and holding him as hard as he wants because that's how Sam saved him, and even with the demon blood and the white hot pain and the bloodlust he never wanted to see in his brother's eyes, Sam would do it again and again and again. He's proud of it.

He keeps his voice in check. "So we have to clean each other's messes. What else is new?"

Dean still looks pretty shaken, but his eyes flit over Sam's face like he's searching for something, and then he leans forward, pressing his mouth softly against Sam's. "That, if I recall correctly," he says when he pulls back.

Sam gives him a pained smile. "That's kind of new, yeah."

Sam watches what seems like a thousand different emotions war on Dean's face. Finally he gets himself under control, shaking his head for clarity and wrinkling his nose. "This room smells awful."

And well, there it is. The moment is dead and buried.

"You said it," Sam agrees. "I need a shower and then we can leave?"

Dean nods his assent. Everything is packed into the car by the time Sam comes out. He walks slowly to his brother, still a little surprised he's there for the touching, and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean makes a hissing sound and yanks back as if Sam has just poked a bruise.

Sam pulls his fingers away and watches as Dean rolls up his shirt to reveal three bright red finger prints. As if someone tried to grab him, but their reach wasn't long enough. Sam was holding Dean just out of range.

"What the fuck is that?" Dean asks. "It burns like a motherfucker."

"Castiel," Sam guesses, leaning down to put his mouth on the swollen skin. "I kinda like it."

"Yeah, it's not branding your arm," he grouses as he rolls his sleeve back down. "Think we'll ever hear from him again?"

"I'm counting on it." Sam smacks Dean's ass. "But he knows who you belong to now."

Dean mutters something about being an independent woman, and Sam laughs at him, shoving him toward the door.

"Let's get some pie," Dean says. "I haven't had pie in…"

"Four months."

Dean's face screws up just a bit, but he doesn’t answer.

"What?" Sam asks. "What's wrong now?"

Dean shakes his head, letting his fingers rest on the doorknob. "Nothing," he says. "Just felt a little longer than that."

Sam frowns. He steps forward and gives Dean a quick moment of pressure on his lips. Reminds both of them that this is real, they're together, finally, and no one can take that from them. "You're here now."

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean agrees, squeezing Sam's shoulder. "We both are."

It's a dream come true. Literally, a fucking dream come true. Sam laughs at himself for even having the thought and ignores the questioning glance Dean gives him as he shuts the door.

**End.**


End file.
